Short Fiction quotes

“No, he wasn’t rich, Ernst. He had only a little himself; but that little he shared with the other till darkness was past.

If we only have patience to wait through the night, children, be sure that day will break at the close of it.

”

“No, Placide,” said Offdean eagerly, as they rode slowly along; “your own honor is going to tell you that.

The way to love a woman is to think first of her happiness.

If you love Euphrasie, you must go to her clean. I love her myself enough to want you to do that. I shall leave this place tomorrow; you will never see me again if I can help it. Isn’t that enough for you?

However, he would do what he could now. He ran swiftly to the outer road, and to the spot where he had left his pony.

The horse was gone, and with it the United States mailbag!

For an instant Chouchoute stood half-stunned with terror. Then, in one quick flash, came to his mind a vision of possibilities that sickened him. Disgrace overtaking him in this position of trust; poverty his portion again;

I come ’long side—de train—an’ fling de sack. I seed ’im kotch it, and I don’ know nuttin’ mo’ ’cep’ mis’ry, tell I see you—a-comin’ frough de do’. Mebby Ma’ame Armand know some’pin,” he murmured faintly, “w’at gwine make my—head quit tu’nin’ ’round dat away.

I boun’ to git well, ’ca’se who⁠—gwine⁠—watch Marse⁠—Chouchoute?

”

Marianne carried a gun across her shoulder as easily as a soldier might.

Her stride was as untrammelled as that of the stag who treads his native hillside unmolested.

There was something stag-like, too, in the poise of her small head as she turned it from side to side, to snuff the subtle perfume of the Indian summer.

“Do you not know, Captain Vaudry,” she said with savage resistance, “I have breathed the free air of forest and stream, till it is in my blood now.

I was not born to be the mother of slaves.

”

“

Freedom is left for me!

” exclaimed the girl, seizing her gun that she lifted upon her shoulder. “Marianne goes to the Cherokees! You cannot stay me; you need not try to. Hardships may await me, but let it be death rather than bondage.”

“Freedom is left for me!” exclaimed the girl, seizing her gun that she lifted upon her shoulder. “Marianne goes to the Cherokees! You cannot stay me; you need not try to.

Hardships may await me, but let it be death rather than bondage.

”

“Here’s money!” he called out, plunging his old hand in the thick of it. “Who says St. Ange shall not go to school?

The war’s over⁠—here’s money!

St. Ange, my boy,” turning to Bertrand and speaking with quick authority, “tell Buck Williams to hitch Black Bess to the buggy, and go bring Judge Parkerson here.”

When the half dozen little ones were hungry, old Cléophas would take the fiddle from its flannel bag and play a tune upon it.

Perhaps it was to drown their cries, or their hunger, or his conscience, or all three.

One day Fifine, in a rage, stamped her small foot and clinched her little hands, and declared:

“It’s jis like you say, Fifine,” murmured old Cléophas, huskily, when he had played upon the new fiddle that night. “

It’s one fine fiddle; an’ like you say, it shine’ like satin. But some way or udder, ’t ain’ de same.

Yair, Fifine, take it—put it ’side. I b’lieve, me, I ain’ goin’ play de fiddle no mo’.”

Monsieur understood and appreciated the situation at once, and he has prevailed upon Madame Bênitou to accept the gratuitous services of Uncle Oswald for the sake of the old darky’s own safety and happiness.

Uncle Oswald never tries to run away now.

He chops wood and hauls water. He cheerfully and faithfully bears the parcels that Susanne used to carry; and makes an excellent cup of black coffee.

Madame did not even forget the very comfortable rocking-chair in which Aunt Peggy might “set down,” as she herself feelingly expressed it, “an’ wait fu de en’.”

She has been rocking ever since.

At intervals of about two years Aunt Peggy hobbles up to the house, and delivers the stereotyped address which has become more than familiar:—

Of late his attitude towards Aunt Peggy is simply one of profound astonishment—wonder at the surprising age which an old black woman may attain when she sets her mind to it, for Aunt Peggy is a hundred and twenty-five, so she says.

It may not be true, however. Possibly she is older.

The perfume that came from the damp, massed flowers was heavy and almost sickening in its pungency. Mr. Billy quivered a little, and drew involuntarily back, as if from an unexpected assailant, when the odor reached him.

He had been making cotton and corn for so many years, he had forgotten there were such things as lilies in the world.

“Kiar ’em out? fling ’em ’way?” questioned Pompey, who had observed his master cunningly.

Maman-Nainaine said that when the figs were ripe Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows.

Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was.

It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard, green marbles.

“Ah,” said Maman-Nainaine, arching her eyebrows, “how early the figs have ripened this year!”

“Oh,” said Babette, “I think they have ripened very late.”

“Babette,” continued Maman-Nainaine, as she peeled the very plumpest figs with her pointed silver fruit-knife, “you will carry my love to them all down on Bayou-Lafourche. And tell your Tante Frosine I shall look for her at Toussaint—when the chrysanthemums are in bloom.”

“You been grind that girl too much. She ent a bad girl—I been watch her close, ’count of the chil’ren; she ent bad. All she want, it’s li’le mo’ rope.

You can’t drive a ox with the same gearin’ you drive a mule.

You got to learn that, Tontine.”

Why could he not love Ozéina, who would marry him tomorrow; or Fronie, or any one of a dozen others, rather than that little Spanish vixen?

Calixta’s slender foot had never touched Cuban soil; but her mother’s had, and the Spanish was in her blood all the same.

For that reason the prairie people forgave her much that they would not have overlooked in their own daughters or sisters.

He had tried to put all disturbing thought of her away, on that wedding-day, and he supposed he had succeeded. But he loved her now as he never had.

Because she was no longer beautiful, he loved her.

Because the delicate bloom of her existence had been rudely brushed away; because she was in a manner fallen; because she was Mentine, he loved her; fiercely, as a mother loves an afflicted child.

Poor Ma’ame Pélagie! How could it be different!

While the outward pressure of a young and joyous existence had forced her footsteps into the light, her soul had stayed in the shadow of the ruin.

It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love with her.

That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot.

The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there.

He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. “Tell me what it means!” she cried despairingly.

“It means,” he answered lightly, “that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.”

A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to deny it. “It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown;

“À la fin! mon fils! à la fin!” Tears started to the girl’s eyes and she was rosy with confusion.

“Oh, escuse him, sir; please escuse him,”

she whisperingly entreated, gently striving to disengage the old gentleman’s arms from around the astonished Bartner. But a new line of thought seemed fortunately to take possession of Monsieur Jean Ba, for he moved away and went quickly, pattering like a baby, down the gallery.

He would not even stay to take a bite of supper with them. Maman Chavan watched him as he hurried down the steps and out into the gloom. Then she said to Suzanne: “That man is an angel, Mademoiselle, un ange du bon Dieu.”

“Women, my dear Maman Chavan, you know how it is with me in regard to women. I have drawn a circle round my heart, so⁠—at pretty long range, mind you⁠—and there is not one who gets through it, or over it or under it.”

“Blagueur, va!” laughed Maman Chavan, replenishing her glass from the bottle of sauterne.

The boy looked irresolutely from master to man; then went and sat down beside the fire on a splint-bottom chair.

He sat so close to the blaze that had he been an apple he would have roasted.

As he was but a small boy, clothed in wet rags, he only steamed.

Marsh,” continued the doctor, recovering his usual amiability. “I think well be able to do something with the boy. I’m pretty sure of it. For, you see, he has his grandmother’s eyes; and his grandmother was a very intelligent woman; a clever woman, Marsh.

Her one great mistake was when she married Théodule Peloté.

”

The little one, who did not understand French, was not disturbed by the reprimand, and stayed on in madame’s lap. She rested her plump little cheek, that was hot and flushed, against the soft white linen of the old lady’s gown.

Her cheek was very hot and very flushed.

It was dry, too, and so were her hands. The child’s breathing was quick and irregular. Madame was not long in detecting these signs of disturbance.

But the trouble was that after the little one went away, she could think of nothing really objectionable against her except the accident of her birth, which was, after all, her misfortune; and her ignorance of the French language, which was not her fault.

But the touch of the caressing baby arms; the pressure of the soft little body in the night; the tones of the voice, and the feeling of the hot lips when the child kissed her, believing herself to be with her mother, were impressions that had sunk through the crust of madame’s prejudice and reached her heart.

She often walked the length of the gallery, looking out across the wide, majestic river. Sometimes she trod the mazes of her garden where the solitude was almost that of a tropical jungle.

The first shoot that it sent forth was Doubt. Madame plucked it away once or twice. But it sprouted again, and with it Mistrust and Dissatisfaction.

Then from the heart of the seed, and amid the shoots of Doubt and Misgiving, came the flower of Truth.

It was a very beautiful flower, and it bloomed on Christmas morning.

“What a lucky chance was that fever! What a happy accident!” gurgled Madame Lalonde.

“Cécile, it was no accident, I tell you; it was Providence,” spoke madame, reprovingly, and no one contradicted her.

They all drove back together to eat Christmas dinner in the old house by the river. Madame held her little granddaughter upon her lap; her son Henri sat facing her, and beside her was her daughter-in-law.

“I have offended you and I would rather die!” it ran. “Do not banish me from your presence that is life to me. Let me lie at your feet, if only for a moment, in which to hear you say that you forgive me.”

Men have written just such letters before, but Madame did not know it.

To her it was a voice from the unknown, like music, awaking in her a delicious tumult that seized and held possession of her whole being.

“Would you have me believe that you can wed your young existence to the dead?” he exclaimed with something like horror. Her glance was sunk deep in the embankment of flowers before her.

“My husband has never been so living to me as he is now,” she replied with a faint smile of commiseration for Sépincourt’s fatuity.

“Every object that surrounds me speaks to me of him. I look yonder across the marais, and I see him coming toward me, tired and toil-stained from the hunt. I see him again sitting in this chair or in that one.

We walk once more together beneath the magnolias; and at night in dreams I feel that he is there, there, near me. How could it be different! Ah! I have memories, memories to crowd and fill my life, if I live a hundred years!”

Sépincourt was wondering why she did not take the sword down from her altar and thrust it through his body here and there.

The effect would have been infinitely more agreeable than her words, penetrating his soul like fire. He arose confused, enraged with pain.

“Oh, I only wanted to wish you bon voyage,” she assured him amiably.

Many days after that Sépincourt spent in the fruitless mental effort of trying to comprehend that psychological enigma, a woman’s heart.

Madame still lives on Bayou St. John. She is rather an old lady now, a very pretty old lady, against whose long years of widowhood there has never been a breath of reproach. The memory of Gustave still fills and satisfies her days.

“However, you may well believe that Madame would not hear to that. Zoraïde was forbidden to speak to Mézor, and Mézor was cautioned against seeing Zoraïde again. But you know how the negroes are, Ma’zélle Titite,” added Manna Loulou, smiling a little sadly. “

There is no mistress, no master, no king nor priest who can hinder them from loving when they will.

And these two found ways and means.

She remembered how she had encountered him daily in her path, with his earnest, devouring eyes always seeking her out. She recalled—but there was no need to recall anything.

There are women whose perception of passion is very keen; they are the women who most inspire it.

A feeling of complacency took possession of her with this conviction. There was some softness and sympathy mingled with it.

“You know, Tonie—that young lady whom you cared for—well, someone read it to me in the papers—she died last winter.” She had tried to speak as cautiously as she could.

“Yes, I know she is dead. I am glad.”

It was the first time he had said this in words, and it made his heart beat quicker.

Never had he seen in a woman’s eyes a look of such heartbroken entreaty. He resolved on the instant to know the meaning of it before setting foot on Texas soil.

Grégoire had never learned to steel his heart against a woman’s eyes, no matter what language they spoke.

An old patchwork quilt folded double and a moss pillow which ’Tite Reine gave him out on the gallery made a bed that was, after all, not too uncomfortable for a young fellow of rugged habits.

She was not thinking of his words, only drinking in the tones of his voice. She wanted to reach out her hand in the darkness and touch him with the sensitive tips of her fingers upon the face or the lips.

She wanted to draw close to him and whisper against his cheek⁠—she did not care what⁠—as she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman.

The stronger the impulse grew to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she draw away from him. As soon as she could do so without an appearance of too great rudeness, she rose and left him there alone.

Mrs. Baroda was greatly tempted that night to tell her husband—who was also her friend—of this folly that had seized her. But she did not yield to the temptation.

Beside being a respectable woman she was a very sensible one; and she knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.

When Gaston arose in the morning, his wife had already departed. She had taken an early morning train to the city. She did not return till Gouvernail was gone from under her roof.

He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.

She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

But Richard was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease⁠—of joy that kills.

… of trees and foliage nearby blended in one black mass and the night came stealing out from them, too, and from the east and west, until the only light in the sky, filtering through the maple leaves and a star looking down through every cranny.

The night is solemn and it means mystery.

Human shapes flitted by like intangible things. Some stole up like little mice to peep at me. I did not mind. My whole being was abandoned to the soothing and penetrating charm of the night.

They go off thus to the woods together where they may love each other away from all prying eyes save those of the birds and the squirrels. But what do the squirrels care!

For my part I never expected Juanita to be more respectable than a squirrel: and I don’t see how anyone else could have expected it.

But even this estimate of my poor Cavanelle was destined not to last.

By the time I had seated myself in the Prytania street car and passed up my nickel, I was convinced that Cavanelle was an angel.

Mamzelle Aurélie possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to gray, and a determined eye. She wore a man’s hat about the farm, and an old blue army overcoat when it was cold, and sometimes top-boots.

Mamzelle Aurélie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to regret it.

So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion.

She gave one slow glance through the room, into which the evening shadows were creeping and deepening around her solitary figure. She let her head fall down upon her bended arm, and began to cry. Oh, but she cried! Not softly, as women often do.

She cried like a man, with sobs that seemed to tear her very soul.

She did not notice Ponto licking her hand.

Her sleek hair was painfully and suspiciously black. She powdered her face abundantly with poudre de riz before starting out, and pinned a dotted black lace veil over her straw bonnet.

There was little force or character or anything in her withered face, except a pathetic desire and appeal to be permitted to exist.

Mamzelle Fleurette did not walk down Chartres street with her usual composed tread; she seemed preoccupied and agitated.

If she ever came to such knowledge, it would be by no intellectual research, by no subtle analyses or tracing the motives of actions to their source.

It would come to her as the song to the bird, the perfume and color to the flower.

Her parents had hoped—not without reason and justice—that marriage would bring the poise, the desirable pose, so glaringly lacking in Athénaïse’s character. Marriage they knew to be a wonderful and powerful agent in the development and formation of a woman’s character;

He had never scolded, or called names, or deprived her of comforts, or been guilty of any of the many reprehensible acts commonly attributed to objectionable husbands. He did not slight nor neglect her.

Indeed, Cazeau’s chief offense seemed to be that he loved her, and Athénaïse was not the woman to be loved against her will.

She called marriage a trap set for the feet of unwary and unsuspecting girls, and in round, unmeasured terms reproached her mother with treachery and deceit.

He did not slight nor neglect her. Indeed, Cazeau’s chief offense seemed to be that he loved her, and Athénaïse was not the woman to be loved against her will.

She called marriage a trap set for the feet of unwary and unsuspecting girls

, and in round, unmeasured terms reproached her mother with treachery and deceit.

Athénaïse attired herself for the street, and went out to post the letter which she had penned with a single thought, a spontaneous impulse. It would have seemed incoherent to most people, but Cazeau would understand.

She walked along the street as if she had fallen heir to some magnificent inheritance.

On her face was a look of pride and satisfaction that passersby noticed and admired. She wanted to talk to someone, to tell some person;

She felt very grateful. He pressed her hand warmly, lifted his hat, and left her.

He was a man of intelligence, and took defeat gracefully; that was all. But as he made his way back to the carriage, he was thinking, “By heaven, it hurts, it hurts!”

Athénaïse spent a day of supreme happiness and expectancy. The fair sight of the country unfolding itself before her was balm to her vision and to her soul.

Telèsphore at twenty-eight had long felt the need of a wife.

His home without one was like an empty temple in which there is no altar, no offering.

So keenly did he realize the necessity that a dozen times at least during the past year he had been on the point of proposing marriage to almost as many different young women of the neighborhood.

She seemed inwardly excited and preoccupied save for the attention which she lavished upon a large parcel that she carried religiously and laid reverentially down upon the seat before her.

She was neither tall nor short, nor stout nor slender; nor was she beautiful, nor was she plain.

She wore a figured lawn, cut a little low in the back, that exposed a round, soft nuque with a few little clinging circlets of soft, brown hair.

The girl seemed very warm and kept mopping her face. She vainly sought her fan, then she fanned herself with her handkerchief, and finally made an attempt to open the window.

She might as well have tried to move the banks of Red river.

Telèsphore had been unconsciously watching her the whole time and perceiving her straight he arose and went to her assistance. But the window could not be opened.

for the women of the country caution their daughters against speaking to strangers on the trains. But the girl was not one to mistake an Acadian farmer for a Western traveling man.

She was not born in Avoyelles parish for nothing.

“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it,” she said.

At that moment he was looking forward to the ball; there was no doubt about that. Afterwards, he did not know what he would look forward to; he did not care; afterward made no difference.

If he had expected the crash of doom to come after the dance at Foché’s, he would only have smiled in his thankfulness that it was not to come before.

There was the same scene every Saturday at Foché’s! A scene to have aroused the guardians of the peace in a locality where such commodities abound. And all on account of the mammoth pot of gumbo that bubbled, bubbled, bubbled out in the open air.

“Tiens! t’es pareille comme ain mariée, Zaïda;” cried out a lady with a baby in her arms. Some young women tittered and Zaïda fanned herself.

The women’s voices were almost without exception shrill and piercing; the men’s, soft and low-pitched.

The girl turned to Telèsphore, as to an old and valued friend: