Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his
friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.
They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had
also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation.
She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and
undisturbed tete-a-tete with her husband, when he informed her that
Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.
This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her
husband's college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a
society man or "a man about town," which were, perhaps, some of the
reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an
image of him in her mind. She pictured him tall, slim, cynical; with
eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him.
Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn't very tall nor very cynical;
neither did he wear eyeglasses nor carry his hands in his pockets. And
she rather liked him when he first presented himself.
But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself
when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of
those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had
often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute
and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home
and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as
courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he
made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.
Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide
portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his
cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston's experience as a sugar
planter.
"This is what I call living," he would utter with deep satisfaction, as
the air that swept across the sugar field caressed him with its warm and
scented velvety touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with
the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves sociably against
his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out
and kill grosbecs when Gaston proposed doing so.
Gouvernail's personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda, but she liked him. Indeed,
he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few days, when she could
understand him no better than at first, she gave over being puzzled and
remained piqued. In this mood she left her husband and her guest, for
the most part, alone together. Then finding that Gouvernail took no
manner of exception to her action, she imposed her society upon him,
accompanying him in his idle strolls to the mill and walks along the
batture. She persistently sought to penetrate the reserve in which he
had unconsciously enveloped himself.