Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/II
What Harding & Offdean had called a piece of land on Red River was better known to the people of Natchitoches parish as “the old Santien place.”
In the days of Lucien Santien and his hundred slaves, it had been very splendid in the wealth of its thousand acres. But the war did its work, of course. Then Jules Santien was not the man to mend such damage as the war had left. His three sons were even less able than he had been to bear the weighty inheritance of debt that came to them with the dismantled plantation; so it was a deliverance to all when Harding & Offdean, the New Orleans creditors, relieved them of the place with the responsibility and indebtedness which its ownership had entailed.
Hector, the eldest, and Grégoire, the youngest of these Santien boys, had gone each his way. Placide alone tried to keep a desultory foothold upon the land which had been his and his forefathers’. But he too was given to wandering – within a radius, however, which rarely took him so far that he could not reach the old place in an afternoon of travel, when he felt so inclined.
There were acres of open land cultivated in a slovenly fashion, but so rich that cotton and corn and weed and “cocoa-grass” grew rampant if they had only the semblance of a chance. The negro quarters were at the far end of this open stretch, and consisted of a long row of old and very crippled cabins. Directly back of these a dense wood grew, and held much mystery, and witchery of sound and shadow, and strange lights when the sun shone. Of a gin-house there was left scarcely a trace; only so much as could serve as inadequate shelter to the miserable dozen cattle that huddled within it in wintertime.
A dozen rods or more from the Red River bank stood the dwelling-house, and nowhere upon the plantation had time touched so sadly as here. The steep, black, moss-covered roof sat like an extinguisher above the eight large rooms that it covered, and had come to do its office so poorly that not more than half of these were habitable when the rain fell. Perhaps the live-oaks made too thick and close a shelter about it. The verandas were long and broad and inviting; but it was well to know that the brick pillar was crumbling away under one corner, that the railing was insecure at another, and that still another had long ago been condemned as unsafe. But that, of course, was not the corner in which Wallace Offdean sat the day following his arrival at the Santien place. This one was comparatively secure. A gloire-de-Dijon, thick leaved and charged with huge creamy blossoms, grew and spread here like a hardy vine upon the wires that stretched from post to post. The scent of the blossoms was delicious; and the stillness that surrounded Offdean agreeably fitted his humor that asked for rest. His old host, Pierre Manton, the manager of the place, sat talking to him in a soft, rhythmic monotone; but his speech was hardly more of an interruption than the hum of the bees among the roses. He was saying: -
“If it would been me myse’f, I would nevair grumb’. W’en a chimbly breck, I take one, two de boys; we patch ‘im up bes’ we know how. We keep on men’ de fence’, firs’ one place, anudder; an’ if it wouldn’ be fer dem mule’ of Lacroix – tonnere! I don’ wan’ to talk ‘bout dem mule’. But me, I wouldn’ grumb’. It’s Euphrasie, hair. She say dat’s all fool nonsense fer rich man lack Hardin’-Offde’n to let a piece o’ lan’ goin’ lack dat.”
“Euphrasie?” questioned Offdean, in some surprise; for he had not yet heard of any such person.
“Euphrasie, my li’le chile. Escuse me one minute,” Pierre added, remembering that he was in his shirt-sleeves, and rising to reach for his coat, which hung upon a peg near by. He was a small, square man, with mild, kindly face, brown and roughened from healthy exposure. His hair hung gray and long beneath the soft felt hat that he wore. When he had seated himself, Offdean asked:-
“Where is your little child? I haven’t seen her,” inwardly marveling that a little child should have uttered such words of wisdom as those recorded of her.
“She yonder to Mme. Duplan on Cane 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 day, 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”-