The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Kate Chopin [129]
“Gabriel, w‘at is the matter?” she asked imploringly. “Oh, my poor child, w’at is the matter?” He looked at her in a fixed way and passed a hand over his head. He tried to speak, but his voice failed, as with one who experiences stage fright. Then he articulated, hoarsely, swallowing nervously between the slow words:
“I—killed a man—about an hour ago—yonder in the old Nigger-Luke Cabin.” Tante Elodie’s two hands went suddenly down to the table and she leaned heavily upon them for support.
“You did not; you did not,” she panted. “You are drinking. You do not know w‘at you are saying. Tell me, Gabriel, who ’as been making you drink? Ah! they will answer to me! You do not know w’at you are saying. Boute!216 how can you know!” She clutched him and the torn button that hung in the button-hole fell to the floor.
“I don’t know why it happened,” he went on, gazing into the fire with unseeing eyes, or rather with eyes that saw what was pictured in his mind and not what was before them.
“I’ve been in cutting scrapes and shooting scrapes that never amounted to anything, when I was just as crazy mad as I was to-night. But I tell you, Tante Elodie, he’s dead. I’ve got to get away. But how are you going to get out of a place like this, when every dog and cat”—His effort had spent itself, and he began to tremble with a nervous chill; his teeth chattered and his lips could not form an utterance.
Tante Elodie, stumbling rather than walking, went over to a small buffet and pouring some brandy into a glass, gave it to him. She took a little herself. She looked much older in the peignoir and the handkerchief tied around her head. She sat down beside Gabriel and took his hand. It was cold and clammy.
“Tell me everything,” she said with determination, “everything; without delay; and do not speak so loud. We shall see what must be done. Was it a negro? Tell me everything.”
“No, it was a white man, you don’t know, from Conshotta,217 named Everson. He was half drunk; a hulking bully as strong as an ox, or I could have licked him. He tortured me until I was frantic. Did you ever see a cat torment a mouse? The mouse can’t do anything but lose its head. I lost my head, but I had my knife; that big hornhandled knife.”
“Where is it?” she asked sharply. He felt his back pocket.
“I don’t know.” He did not seem to care, or to realize the importance of the loss.
“Go on; make haste; tell me the whole story. You went from here—you went—go on.”
“I went down the river a piece,” he said, throwing himself back in the chair and keeping his eyes fixed upon one burning ember on the hearth, “down to Symund’s store where there was a game of cards. A lot of the fellows were there. I played a little and didn’t drink anything, and stopped at ten. I was going”—He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging between. “I was going to see a woman at eleven o’clock; it was the only time I could see her. I came along and when I got by the old Nigger-Luke Cabin I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was too early and it wouldn’t do to hang around. I went into the cabin and started a blaze in the chimney with some fine wood I found there. My feet were cold and I sat on an empty soap-box before the fire to dry them. I remember I kept looking at my watch. It was twenty-five minutes to eleven when Everson came into the cabin. He was half drunk and his face was red and looked like a beast. He had left the game and had followed me. I hadn’t spoken of where I was going. But he said he knew I was off for a lark and he wanted to go along. I said he couldn’t go where I was going, and there was no use talking. He kept it up. At a quarter to eleven I wanted to go, and he went and stood in the doorway.
“ ‘If I don’t go, you don’t go,’ he said, and he kept it up. When I tried to pass him he pushed me back like I was a feather. He didn’t get mad. He laughed all