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Updated: May 10, 2025
I want you just to tell yourself 'He don't care a curse. It won't be the truth, but I want you to act as if it were. Those things are mine. Just mine. I've set them in a sort of grave, and it's only going to be my hands that open it, and my eyes that look into it. You don't need to avoid talk of Nita and little Coqueline if you feel that way. You can't open that grave. It's mine. And it's deep.
The doctor's observant eyes lost nothing of the change, although the sunshine on the dancing waters seemed to absorb his whole attention. "Guess little Coqueline absorbs more bottles to the twenty-four hours than you'd ever guess she was made to fit," Steve replied with a half laugh. "She kind of reminds you of one of those African sand rivers in the rainy season. Nita's the same as usual.
The man's hot eyes were suddenly turned on the distant child's cot, and he nodded at it. "It's that makes me sick," he cried vehemently. "It's his!" "She's mine!" Nita cried sharply. "And where I go she goes." Nita read the man's mood with all the instinct of a mother. Three years ago when she brought Coqueline into the world the infant claim upon her had been loose enough. It was different now.
The child was a sheet-anchor for all time. Whatever the future had in store, little Coqueline was her child, born in wedlock, the pledge of her maiden dreams. "Tchah! She's his!" The man's restraint was giving before the brutal, the criminal, that was the essence of him. "Why in hell should I feed his brat? Why should I be burdened with it? Can't you see?
And its growth had been rapid enough with the passing of the first months of the delirious happiness which had been theirs, and which had culminated in the precious arrival of their little daughter Coqueline. "Guess you must have had a real good time," Steve said, by way of breaking the prolonged silence. For reply the girl only nodded. The contrast between them was strongly marked.
And these chores are yours by all the laws of God, and the Nature that made you the mother of our little Coqueline. You've got to cut this crazy notion for fool pleasures right out, till the pleasure time comes around. That time isn't yet. The woman who lets her child and her home suffer for joy notions isn't worth the room she'll take in hell later.
He was thinking of that moment of parting, when he had gazed down into the great blue eyes of his baby girl as she was held up to him by her erring mother. "Keeko!" he muttered again. "Coqueline!" Then, after a long, almost interminable pause: "Nita!" Years ago Steve had drunk to the dregs a despair that left life shorn of everything but a desolate existence.
The man's smile was gently humorous. For once he had not the courage to pursue the downright course which his nature prompted. Little Coqueline was foremost in his thoughts. Then there was the memory of all the happiness his home meant to him, and he feared that which undue precipitancy might bring about. The girl looked up from the stove.
The parlour, a bedroom for Steve and Nita, and, leading out of the latter, a small apartment sacred to the tiny atom of humanity which they had christened Coqueline, and whom the man, from the moment his eyes had been permitted to gaze upon her, some fifteen months earlier, regarded as the most perfect, wonderful, priceless treasure in the world.
Understand, for you, and for little Coqueline. I'm out to make good with all that's in me. And it don't matter a curse to me if all hell freezes over, I'm going to make good. Get that, and get it good. It's a sort of life-line that ought to make things easy for you. There's just one thing that can break my play, Nita. Only one. It's your weakening. It's up to me to see you don't weaken.
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