At Fault

When Jérôme Lafirme died, his neighbors awaited the results of his
sudden taking off with indolent watchfulness. It was a matter of
unusual interest to them that a plantation of four thousand acres had
been left unincumbered to the disposal of a handsome, inconsolable,
childless Creole widow of thirty. A
bêtise
of some sort might safely
be looked for. But time passing, the anticipated folly failed to
reveal itself; and the only wonder was that Thérèse Lafirme so
successfully followed the methods of her departed husband.

Of course Thérèse had wanted to die with her Jérôme, feeling that life
without him held nothing that could reconcile her to its further
endurance. For days she lived alone with her grief; shutting out the
appeals that came to her from the demoralized "hands," and unmindful
of the disorder that gathered about her. Till Uncle Hiram came one day
with a respectful tender of sympathy, offered in the guise of a
reckless misquoting of Scripture—and with a grievance.

"Mistuss," he said, "I 'lowed 'twar best to come to de house an' tell
you; fur Massa he alluz did say 'Hi'urm, I counts on you to keep a eye
open endurin' my appersunce;' you ricollic, marm?" addressing an
expanse of black bordered cambric that veiled the features of his
mistress. "Things is a goin' wrong; dat dey is. I don't wants to name
no names 'doubt I'se 'bleeged to; but dey done start a kiarrin' de
cotton seed off de place, and dats how."

If Hiram's information had confined itself to the bare statement of
things "goin' wrong," such intimation, of its nature vague and
susceptible of uncertain interpretation, might have failed to rouse
Thérèse from her lethargy of grief. But that wrong doing presented as
a tangible abuse and defiance of authority, served to move her to
action. She felt at once the weight and sacredness of a trust, whose
acceptance brought consolation and awakened unsuspected powers of
doing.

In spite of Uncle Hiram's parting prediction "de cotton 'll be a goin'
naxt" no more seed was hauled under cover of darkness from
Place-du-Bois.

The short length of this Louisiana plantation stretched along Cane
River, meeting the water when that stream was at its highest, with a
thick growth of cotton-wood trees; save where a narrow convenient
opening had been cut into their midst, and where further down the pine
hills started in abrupt prominence from the water and the dead level
of land on either side of them. These hills extended in a long line of
gradual descent far back to the wooded borders of Lac du Bois; and
within the circuit which they formed on the one side, and the
irregular half circle of a sluggish bayou on the other, lay the
cultivated open ground of the plantation—rich in its exhaustless
powers of reproduction.

Among changes which the railroad brought soon after Jérôme Lafirme's
death, and which were viewed by many as of questionable benefit, was
one which drove Thérèse to seek another domicile. The old homestead
that nestled to the hill side and close to the water's edge, had been
abandoned to the inroads of progressive civilization; and Mrs. Lafirme
had rebuilt many rods away from the river and beyond sight of the
mutilated dwelling, converted now into a section house. In building,
she avoided the temptations offered by modern architectural
innovations, and clung to the simplicity of large rooms and broad
verandas: a style whose merits had stood the test of easy-going and
comfort-loving generations.

The negro quarters were scattered at wide intervals over the land,
breaking with picturesque irregularity into the systematic division of
field from field; and in the early spring-time gleaming in their new
coat of whitewash against the tender green of the sprouting cotton and
corn.

Thérèse loved to walk the length of the wide verandas, armed with her
field-glass, and to view her surrounding possessions with comfortable
satisfaction. Then her gaze swept from cabin to cabin; from patch to
patch; up to the pine-capped hills, and down to the station which
squatted a brown and ugly intruder within her fair domain.

She had made pouting resistance to this change at first, opposing it
step by step with a conservatism that yielded only to the resistless.
She pictured a visionary troop of evils coming in the wake of the
railroad, which, in her eyes no conceivable benefits could mitigate.
The occasional tramp, she foresaw as an army; and the travelers whom
chance deposited at the store that adjoined the station, she dreaded
as an endless procession of intruders forcing themselves upon her
privacy.

Grégoire, the young nephew of Mrs. Lafirme, whose duty on the
plantation was comprehended in doing as he was bid, qualified by a
propensity for doing as he liked, rode up from the store one day in
the reckless fashion peculiar to Southern youth, breathless with the
information that a stranger was there wishing audience with her.

Thérèse at once bristled with objections. Here was a confirmation of
her worst dread. But encouraged by Grégoire's reiteration "he 'pear to
me like a nice sort o' person," she yielded a grudging assent to the
interview.

She sat within the wide hall-way beyond the glare and heat that were
beating mercilessly down upon the world out of doors, engaged in a
light work not so exacting as to keep her thoughts and glance from
wandering. Looking through the wide open back doors, the picture which
she saw was a section of the perfect lawn that encircled the house for
an acre around, and from which Hiram was slowly raking the leaves cast
from a clump of tall magnolias. Beneath the spreading shade of an
umbrella-China tree, lay the burly Hector, but half awake to the
possible nearness of tramps; and Betsy, a piece of youthful ebony in
blue cottonade, was crossing leisurely on her way to the poultry yard;
unheeding the scorching sun-rays that she thought were sufficiently
parried by the pan of chick feed that she balanced adroitly on her
bushy black head.

At the front, the view at certain seasons would have been clear and
unbroken: to the station, the store, and out-lying hills. But now she
could see beyond the lawn only a quivering curtain of rich green which
the growing corn spread before the level landscape, and above whose
swaying heads appeared occasionally the top of an advancing white
sun-shade.

Thérèse was of a roundness of figure suggesting a future of excessive
fullness if not judiciously guarded; and she was fair, with a warm
whiteness that a passing thought could deepen into color. The waving
blonde hair, gathered in an abundant coil on top of her head, grew
away with a pretty sweep from the temples, the low forehead and nape
of the white neck that showed above a frill of soft lace. Her eyes
were blue, as certain gems are; that deep blue that lights, and glows,
and tells things of the soul. When David Hosmer presented himself,
they were intense only with expectancy and the color was in her cheek
like the blush in a shell.

He was a tall individual of perhaps forty; thin and sallow. His black
hair was streaked abundantly with grey, and his face marked with
premature lines; left there by care, no doubt, and, by a too close
attention to what men are pleased to call the main chances of life.

"A serious one," was Thérèse's first thought in looking at him. "A man
who has never learned to laugh or who has forgotten how." Though
plainly feeling the effects of the heat, he did not seem to appreciate
the relief offered by the grateful change into this shadowy, sweet
smelling, cool retreat; used as he was to ignore the comforting things
of life when presented to him as irrelevant to that dominant main
chance. He accepted under protest a glass of ice water from the
wide-eyed Betsy, and suffered a fan to be thrust into his hand,
seemingly to save his time or his timidity by its possibly unheeded
rejection.

"Lor'-zee folks," exclaimed the observant Betsy on re-entering the
kitchen, "dey'se a man in yonda, look like he gwine eat somebody up. I
was fur gittin' 'way quick me."

It can be readily imagined that Hosmer lost little time in preliminary
small talk. He introduced himself vaguely as from the West; then
perceiving the need of being more specific as from Saint Louis. She
had guessed he was no Southerner. He had come to Mrs. Lafirme on the
part of himself and others with a moneyed offer for the privilege of
cutting timber from her land for a given number of years. The amount
named was alluring, but here was proposed another change and she felt
plainly called on for resistance.

The company which he represented had in view the erection of a sawmill
some two miles back in the woods, close beside the bayou and at a
convenient distance from the lake. He was not wordy, nor was he eager
in urging his plans; only in a quiet way insistent in showing points
to be considered in her own favor which she would be likely herself to
overlook.

Mrs. Lafirme, a clever enough business woman, was moved by no undue
haste to give her answer. She begged for time to think the matter
over, which Hosmer readily agreed to; expressing a hope that a
favorable answer be sent to him at Natchitoches, where he would await
her convenience. Then resisting rather than declining all further
hospitality, he again took his way through the scorching fields.

Thérèse wanted but time to become familiar with this further change.
Alone she went out to her beloved woods, and at the hush of mid-day,
bade a tearful farewell to the silence.

David Hosmer sat alone in his little office of roughly fashioned pine
board. So small a place, that with his desk and his clerk's desk, a
narrow bed in one corner, and two chairs, there was scant room for a
man to more than turn himself comfortably about. He had just
dispatched his clerk with the daily bundle of letters to the
post-office, two miles away in the Lafirme store, and he now turned
with the air of a man who had well earned his moment of leisure, to
the questionable relaxation of adding columns and columns of figures.

The mill's unceasing buzz made pleasant music to his ears and stirred
reflections of a most agreeable nature. A year had gone by since Mrs.
Lafirme had consented to Hosmer's proposal; and already the business
more than gave promise of justifying the venture. Orders came in from
the North and West more rapidly than they could be filled. That
"Cypresse Funerall" which stands in grim majesty through the dense
forests of Louisiana had already won its just recognition; and
Hosmer's appreciation of a successful business venture was showing
itself in a little more pronounced stoop of shoulder, a deepening of
pre-occupation and a few additional lines about mouth and forehead.

Hardly had the clerk gone with his letters than a light footstep
sounded on the narrow porch; the quick tap of a parasol was heard on
the door-sill; a pleasant voice asking, "Any admission except on
business?" and Thérèse crossed the small room and seated herself
beside Hosmer's desk before giving him time to arise.