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 a nun. 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.