第80章

The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.Along the leafy road which skirted a narrow, tortuous stream in central Louisiana, rumbled an old fashioned cabriolet, much the worse for hard and rough usage over country roads and lanes.The fat, black horses went in a slow, measured trot, notwithstanding constant urging on the part of the fat, black coachman.Within the vehicle were seated the fair Octavie and her old friend and neighbor, Judge Pillier, who had come to take her for a morning drive.

Octavie wore a plain black dress, severe in its simplicity.A narrow belt held it at the waist and the sleeves were gathered into close fitting wristbands.She had discarded her hoopskirt and appeared not unlike anun.Beneath the folds of her bodice nestled the old locket.She never displayed it now.It had returned to her sanctified in her eyes; made precious as material things sometimes are by being forever identified with a significant moment of one's existence.

A hundred times she had read over the letter with which the locket had come back to her.No later than that morning she had again pored over it.As she sat beside the window, smoothing the letter out upon her knee, heavy and spiced odors stole in to her with the songs of birds and the humming of insects in the air.

She was so young and the world was so beautiful that there came over her a sense of unreality as she read again and again the priest's letter.He told of that autumn day drawing to its close, with the gold and the red fading out of the west, and the night gathering its shadows to cover the faces of the dead.Oh! She could not believe that one of those dead was her own! with visage uplifted to the gray sky in an agony of supplication.A spasm of resistance and rebellion seized and swept over her.Why was the spring here with its flowers and its seductive breath if he was dead! Why was she here! What further had she to do with life and the living!

Octavie had experienced many such moments of despair, but a blessed resignation had never failed to follow, and it fell then upon her like a mantle and enveloped her.

"I shall grow old and quiet and sad like poor Aunt Tavie," she murmured to herself as she folded the letter and replaced it in the secretary.Already she gave herself a little demure air like her Aunt Tavie.She walked with a slow glide in unconscious imitation of Mademoiselle Tavie whom some youthful affliction had robbed of earthly compensation while leaving her in possession of youth's illusions.

As she sat in the old cabriolet beside the father of her dead lover, again there came to Octavie the terrible sense of loss which had assailed her so often before.The soul of her youth clamored for its rights; for a share in the world's glory and exultation.She leaned back and drew her veil a little closer about her face.It was an old black veil of her Aunt Tavie's.A whiff of dust from the road had blown in and she wiped her cheeks andher eyes with her soft, white handkerchief, a homemade handkerchief, fabricated from one of her old fine muslin petticoats.