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"No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company." Sosthène and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zoséphine softly pinched her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthène addressed the home-comer aloud: "Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all do?" "No."
It was positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!" Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin.
The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's eye, the image of Zoséphine! This this! that he had never set out to achieve this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence that 'Thanase could have reached home and would not.
Chaouache turned upon his wife one look of silent despair. Wife and children threw themselves upon his neck, weeping and wailing. 'Thanase bore the sight a moment, maybe a full minute; then drew near, pressed the children with kind firmness aside, pushed between his father and mother, took her tenderly by the shoulders, and said in their antique dialect, with his own eyes brimming:
But she only turned her own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted the calèche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling battery. By and by 'Thanase was sixteen.
"You think so?" said Sosthène, but not as if he doubted. "Yes; it is certain now that Zoséphine will always remain the Widow 'Thanase." From College Point to Bell's Point, sixty miles above New Orleans, the Mississippi runs nearly from west to east. Both banks, or "coasts," are lined with large and famous sugar-plantations.
He was not with those who escaped, nor with the dead when they were buried, nor among the wounded anywhere, nor in any group of prisoners. But long after the war was over, another man, swinging a bush scythe among the overgrown corners of a worm fence, found the poor remnant of him, put it scarcely underground, and that was the end. How many times that happened! Was it so with 'Thanase? No.
The rest of the company hastily made way to right and left, chairs were overturned, over went the table, the cards were underfoot. Men ran in from outside and from over the way. The two foes clash together, 'Thanase smites again with his fist, and the other grapples. They tug and strain "Separate them!" cry two or three of the packed crowd in suppressed earnestness. "Separate them!
It was much more than a year afterward when he for the first time ventured to add: "I never wanted you to get her, my dear boy; she is not your kind at all nay, now, let me say it, since I have kept it unsaid so long and patiently. Do you imagine she could ever understand an unselfish life, or even one that tried to be unselfish? She makes an excellent Madame 'Thanase.
"Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" This question to every one met, day in, day out, in early morning lights, in noonday heats, under sunset glows, by a light figure in thin, clean clothing, dusty shoes, and with limp straw hat lowered from the head.
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