Desiree's
Baby
As the day was pleasant,
Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri
to see Desiree and the baby.
It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby.
Why, it seemed but yesterday that Desiree was little more than a baby herself;
when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde
had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.
The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for
"Dada." That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought
she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling
age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of
Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that
Coton Mais kept, just below
the plantation. In time Madame Valmonde abandoned
every speculation but the one that Desiree had been sent to her by a beneficent
Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child
of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle,
affectionate and sincere - the idol of Valmonde.
It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the
stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that
Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had
fallen in love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys
fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not
loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from
Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in
him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or
like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
Monsieur Valmonde grew
practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl's obscure
origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she
was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the
oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille
from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived;
then they were married.
Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks.
When she reached L'Abri she shuddered at the first
sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many
years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and
she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down
steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that
encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks
grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it
like a pall. Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one,
too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be
gay, as they had been during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime.
The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins 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 Desiree 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
Desiree, "at the way he has grown. The little cochon
de lait! 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, Madame."
"And the way he cries," went
on Desiree, "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?"
Desiree'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 Desiree 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 Desiree 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, Desiree
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. Desiree was miserable enough to die.
She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir,
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. Desiree'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 Desiree: Come home to Valmonde;
back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child."
When the letter reached Desiree 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.
Desiree 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.
Desiree 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 did not take
the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked across a deserted field, where the
stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to
shreds.
She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew
thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back
again.
Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a
great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway
that commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half
dozen negroes the material which kept this fire
ablaze.
A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was laid upon the pyre, which had already been
fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and
velvet and satin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and
gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare quality.
The last
thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings
that Desiree had sent to him during the days of their espousal. There was the
remnant of one back in the drawer from which he took them. But it was not
Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read
it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband's love:--
"But above all," she wrote, "night and
day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand
will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is
cursed with the brand of slavery."