75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories. Коллектив авторовЧитать онлайн книгу.
was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins[118] and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.
Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desirée and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.
‘This is not the baby!’ she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at Valmonde in those days.
‘I knew you would be astonished,’ laughed Desirée, ‘at the way he has grown. The little cochon de lait![119] Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails, – real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn’t it true, Zandrine?’
The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, ‘Mais si[120], Madame.’
‘And the way he cries,’ went on Desirée, ‘is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche’s cabin.’
Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine, whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.
‘Yes, the child has grown, has changed,’ said Madame Valmonde, slowly, as she replaced it beside its mother. ‘What does Armand say?’
Desirée’s face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.
‘Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not, – that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn’t true. I know he says that to please me. And mamma,’ she added, drawing Madame Valmonde’s head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, ‘he hasn’t punished one of them – not one of them – since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work – he only laughed, and said Negrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I’m so happy; it frightens me.’
What Desirée said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Desirée so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand’s dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.
When the baby was about three months old, Desirée awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband’s manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Desirée was miserable enough to die.
She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir[121], listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche’s little quadroon boys – half naked too – stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers. Desirée’s eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. ‘Ah!’ It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face.
She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.
She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of fright.
Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and began to search among some papers which covered it.
‘Armand,’ she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not notice. ‘Armand,’ she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards him. ‘Armand,’ she panted once more, clutching his arm, ‘look at our child. What does it mean? tell me.’
He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. ‘Tell me what it means!’ she cried despairingly.
‘It means,’ he answered lightly, ‘that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.’
A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to deny it. ‘It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair,’ seizing his wrist. ‘Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,’ she laughed hysterically.
‘As white as La Blanche’s,’ he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their child.
When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmonde.
‘My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God’s sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live.’
The answer that came was brief:
‘My own Desirée: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child.’
When the letter reached Desirée she went with it to her husband’s study, and laid it open upon the desk before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there.
In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.
He said nothing. ‘Shall I go, Armand?’ she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense.
‘Yes, go.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘Yes, I want you to go.’
He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife’s soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.
She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he would call her back.
‘Good-by, Armand,’ she moaned.
He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.
Desirée went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse’s arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under the live-oak branches.
It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking cotton.
Desirée had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun’s rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She
muslin – a thin cotton fabric, first made in Mosul, Iraq
cochon de lait – a sucking pig; here: a small baby
Mais si! = Oh, yes, yes!
peignoir – a loose dressing gown