A quiet footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neat garb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, a silent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane, walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of Canal Marigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti—these were all; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the return of Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle to the precincts of his birth and early life.
But we hardly give the event its right name. It was Capitaine Lemaitre who had disappeared; it was Monsieur Vignevielle who had come back. The pleasures, the haunts, the companions, that had once held out theircharms to the impetuous youth, offered no enticements to Madame Delphine's banker. There is this to be said even for the pride his grandfather had taught him, that it had always held him above low indulgences; and though he had dallied with kings, queens, and knaves through all the mazes of Faro, Rondeau, and Craps, he had done it loftily; but now he maintained a peaceful estrangement from all. Evariste and Jean, themselves, found him only by seeking.
"It is the right way," he said to Père Jerome, the day we saw him there. "Ursin Lemaitre is dead. I have buried him. He left a will. I am his executor."
"He is crazy," said his lawyer brother-in-law, impatiently.
"On the contr-y," replied the little priest, "'e 'as come ad hisse'f."
Evariste spoke.
"Look at his face, Jean. Men with that kind of face are the last to go crazy."
"You have not proved that," replied Jean, with an attorney's obstinacy. "You shouldhave heard him talk the other day about that newspaper paragraph. 'I have taken Ursin Lemaitre's head; I have it with me; I claim the reward, but I desire to commute it to citizenship.' He is crazy."
Of course Jean Thompson did not believe what he said; but he said it, and, in his vexation, repeated it, on thebanquettesand at the clubs; and presently it took the shape of a sly rumor, that the returned rover was a trifle snarled in his top-hamper.
This whisper was helped into circulation by many trivial eccentricities of manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of his transactions in business.
"My dear sir!" cried his astounded lawyer, one day, "you are not running a charitable institution!"
"How do you know?" said Monsieur Vignevielle. There the conversation ceased.
"Why do you not found hospitals and asylums at once," asked the attorney, at another time, with a vexed laugh, "and get the credit of it?"
"And make the end worse than the beginning," said the banker, with a gentle smile, turning away to a desk of books.
"Bah!" muttered Jean Thompson.
Monsieur Vignevielle betrayed one very bad symptom. Wherever he went he seemed looking for somebody. It may have been perceptible only to those who were sufficiently interested in him to study his movements; but those who saw it once saw it always. He never passed an open door or gate but he glanced in; and often, where it stood but slightly ajar, you might see him give it a gentle push with his hand or cane. It was very singular.
He walked much alone after dark. Theguichinangoes(garroters, we might say), at those times the city's particular terror by night, never crossed his path. He was one of those men for whom danger appears to stand aside.
One beautiful summer night, when all nature seemed hushed in ecstasy, the last blush gone that told of the sun's parting, MonsieurVignevielle, in the course of one of those contemplative, uncompanioned walks which it was his habit to take, came slowly along the more open portion of the Rue Royale, with a step which was soft without intention, occasionally touching the end of his stout cane gently to the ground and looking upward among his old acquaintances, the stars.
It was one of those southern nights under whose spell all the sterner energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by the genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was still again, as if the breezes lifted their expectant pinions and lowered them once more, awaiting the rising of the moon in a silence which fell upon the fields, the roads, the gardens, the walls, and the suburban and half-suburban streets, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose.
Monsieur Vignevielle's steps were bent toward the more central part of the town, and he was presently passing along a high, close, board-fence, on the right-hand side of the way, when, just within this inclosure, and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the passer's attention, but he paused and looked up.
And then he remarked something more,—that the air where he had stopped was filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. He looked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate just there. Would he push it, as his wont was? The grass was growing about it in a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. An iron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into the gate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithing business—an eye which had later received high training as an eye for fastenings—fellupon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood had shrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without falling out. The strange habit asserted itself; he laid his large hand upon the cross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was drawn partly open.
At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door or gate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image of whose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it had met him in his life's path and turned him face about from the way of destruction.
The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within the opening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, a broad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-trees and tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell, the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weeds stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There, very near by,was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had tempted him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from him in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, and escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door of the house might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon his ear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the broken shells,—one only, and then all was for a moment still again. Had he mistaken? No. The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale glimpse of robes came through the tangle, and then, plainly to view, appeared an outline—a presence—a form—a spirit—a girl!
From throat to instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her temples,—her arms, half hid in a snowy mistof sleeve, let down to guide her spotless skirts free from the dewy touch of the grass,—straight down the path she came!
Will she stop? Will she turn aside? Will she espy the dark form in the deep shade of the orange, and, with one piercing scream, wheel and vanish? She draws near. She approaches the jasmine; she raises her arms, the sleeves falling like a vapor down to the shoulders; rises upon tiptoe, and plucks a spray. O Memory! Can it be?Can it be?Is this his quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to M. Vignevielle the unsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she is now, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon will shine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to do that. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neck and throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mocking-bird cannot withhold; he breaks into song—she turns—she turns her face—it is she, it is she! Madame Delphine's daughter is the girl he met on the ship.
She was just passing seventeen—that beautiful year when the heart of the maiden still beats quickly with the surprise of her new dominion, while with gentle dignity her brow accepts the holy coronation of womanhood. The forehead and temples beneath her loosely bound hair were fair without paleness, and meek without languor. She had the soft, lacklustre beauty of the South; no ruddiness of coral, no waxen white, no pink of shell; no heavenly blue in the glance; but a face that seemed, in all its other beauties, only a tender accompaniment for the large, brown, melting eyes, where the openness of child-nature mingled dreamily with the sweet mysteries of maiden thought. We say no color of shell on face or throat; but this was no deficiency,that which took its place being the warm, transparent tint of sculptured ivory.
This side door-way which led from Madame Delphine's house into her garden was overarched partly by an old remnant of vine-covered lattice, and partly by a crape-myrtle, against whose small, polished trunk leaned a rustic seat. Here Madame Delphine and Olive loved to sit when the twilights were balmy or the moon was bright.
"Chérie," said Madame Delphine on one of these evenings, "why do you dream so much?"
She spoke in thepatoismost natural to her, and which her daughter had easily learned.
The girl turned her face to her mother, and smiled, then dropped her glance to the hands in her own lap, which were listlessly handling the end of a ribbon. The mother looked at her with fond solicitude. Her dress was white again; this was but one night since that in which Monsieur Vignevielle had seen her at the bush of night-jasmine. He had not beendiscovered, but had gone away, shutting the gate, and leaving it as he had found it.
Her head was uncovered. Its plaited masses, quite black in the moonlight, hung down and coiled upon the bench, by her side. Her chaste drapery was of that revived classic order which the world of fashion was again laying aside to re-assume the mediæval bondage of the stay-lace; for New Orleans was behind the fashionable world, and Madame Delphine and her daughter were behind New Orleans. A delicate scarf, pale blue, of lightly netted worsted, fell from either shoulder down beside her hands. The look that was bent upon her changed perforce to one of gentle admiration. She seemed the goddess of the garden.
Olive glanced up. Madame Delphine was not prepared for the movement, and on that account repeated her question:
"What are you thinking about?"
The dreamer took the hand that was laid upon hers between her own palms, bowed her head, and gave them a soft kiss.
The mother submitted. Wherefore, in thesilence which followed, a daughter's conscience felt the burden of having withheld an answer, and Olive presently said, as the pair sat looking up into the sky:
"I was thinking of Père Jerome's sermon."
Madame Delphine had feared so. Olive had lived on it ever since the day it was preached. The poor mother was almost ready to repent having ever afforded her the opportunity of hearing it. Meat and drink had become of secondary value to her daughter; she fed upon the sermon.
Olive felt her mother's thought and knew that her mother knew her own; but now that she had confessed, she would ask a question:
"Do you think,maman, that Père Jerome knows it was I who gave that missal?"
"No," said Madame Delphine, "I am sure he does not."
Another question came more timidly:
"Do—do you think he knowshim?"
"Yes, I do. He said in his sermon he did."
Both remained for a long time very still,watching the moon gliding in and through among the small dark-and-white clouds. At last the daughter spoke again.
"I wish I was Père—I wish I was as good as Père Jerome."
"My child," said Madame Delphine, her tone betraying a painful summoning of strength to say what she had lacked the courage to utter,—"my child, I pray the good God you will not let your heart go after one whom you may never see in this world!"
The maiden turned her glance, and their eyes met. She cast her arms about her mother's neck, laid her cheek upon it for a moment, and then, feeling the maternal tear, lifted her lips, and, kissing her, said:
"I will not! I will not!"
But the voice was one, not of willing consent, but of desperate resolution.
"It would be useless, anyhow," said the mother, laying her arm around her daughter's waist.
Olive repeated the kiss, prolonging it passionately.
"I have nobody but you," murmured the girl; "I am a poor quadroone!"
She threw back her plaited hair for a third embrace, when a sound in the shrubbery startled them.
"Qui ci ça?" called Madame Delphine, in a frightened voice, as the two stood up, holding to each other.
No answer.
"It was only the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long holding of the breath. But they went into the house and barred it everywhere.
It was no longer pleasant to sit up. They retired, and in course of time, but not soon, they fell asleep, holding each other very tight, and fearing, even in their dreams, to hear another twig fall.
Monsieur Vignevielle looked in at no more doors or windows; but if the disappearance of this symptom was a favorable sign, others came to notice which were especially bad,—for instance, wakefulness. At well-nigh any hour of the night, the city guard, which itself dared not patrol singly, would meet him on his slow, unmolested, sky-gazing walk.
"Seems to enjoy it," said Jean Thompson; "the worst sort of evidence. If he showed distress of mind, it would not be so bad; but his calmness,—ugly feature."
The attorney had held his ground so long that he began really to believe it was tenable.
By day, it is true, Monsieur Vignevielle was at his post in his quiet "bank." Yet here, day by day, he was the source of more andmore vivid astonishment to those who held preconceived notions of a banker's calling. As a banker, at least, he was certainly out of balance; while as a promenader, it seemed to those who watched him that his ruling idea had now veered about, and that of late he was ever on the quiet alert, not to find, but to evade, somebody.
"Olive, my child," whispered Madame Delphine one morning, as the pair were kneeling side by side on the tiled floor of the church, "yonder is Miché Vignevielle! If you will only look at once—he is just passing a little in——. Ah, much too slow again; he stepped out by the side door."
The mother thought it a strange providence that Monsieur Vignevielle should always be disappearing whenever Olive was with her.
One early dawn, Madame Delphine, with a small empty basket on her arm, stepped out upon thebanquettein front of her house, shut and fastened the door very softly, and stole out in the direction whence you could faintly catch, in the stillness of the daybreak, thesongs of the Gascon butchers and the pounding of their meat-axes on the stalls of the distant market-house. She was going to see if she could find some birds for Olive,—the child's appetite was so poor; and, as she was out, she would drop an early prayer at the cathedral. Faith and works.
"One must venture something, sometimes, in the cause of religion," thought she, as she started timorously on her way. But she had not gone a dozen steps before she repented her temerity. There was some one behind her.
There should not be anything terrible in a footstep merely because it is masculine; but Madame Delphine's mind was not prepared to consider that. A terrible secret was haunting her. Yesterday morning she had found a shoe-track in the garden. She had not disclosed the discovery to Olive, but she had hardly closed her eyes the whole night.
The step behind her now might be the fall of that very shoe. She quickened her pace, but did not leave the sound behind. She hurried forward almost at a run; yet it was stillthere—no farther, no nearer. Two frights were upon her at once—one for herself, another for Olive, left alone in the house; but she had but the one prayer—"God protect my child!" After a fearful time she reached a place of safety, the cathedral. There, panting, she knelt long enough to know the pursuit was, at least, suspended, and then arose, hoping and praying all the saints that she might find the way clear for her return in all haste to Olive.
She approached a different door from that by which she had entered, her eyes in all directions and her heart in her throat.
"Madame Carraze."
She started wildly and almost screamed, though the voice was soft and mild. Monsieur Vignevielle came slowly forward from the shade of the wall. They met beside a bench, upon which she dropped her basket.
"Ah, Miché Vignevielle, I thang de good God to mid you!"
"Is dad so, Madame Carraze? Fo' w'y dad is?"
"A man was chase me all dad way since my 'ouse!"
"Yes, Madame, I sawed him."
"You sawed 'im? Oo it was?"
"'Twas only one man wad is a foolizh. De people say he's crezzie.Mais, he don' goin' to meg you no 'arm."
"But I was scare' fo' my lill' girl."
"Noboddie don' goin' trouble you' lill' gal, Madame Carraze."
Madame Delphine looked up into the speaker's strangely kind and patient eyes, and drew sweet re-assurance from them.
"Madame," said Monsieur Vignevielle, "wad pud you hout so hearly dis morning?"
She told him her errand. She asked if he thought she would find anything.
"Yez," he said, "it was possible—a few lill'bécassines-de-mer, ou somezin' ligue. But fo' w'y you lill' gal lose doze hapetide?"
"Ah, Miché,"—Madame Delphine might have tried a thousand times again without ever succeeding half so well in lifting the curtain upon the whole, sweet, tender, old, old-fashioned truth,—"Ah, Miché, she wone tell me!"
"Bud, anny'ow, Madame, wad you thing?"
"Miché," she replied, looking up again with a tear standing in either eye, and then looking down once more as she began to speak, "I thing—I thing she's lonesome."
"You thing?"
She nodded.
"Ah! Madame Carraze," he said, partly extending his hand, "you see? 'Tis impossible to mague you' owze shud so tighd to priv-en dad. Madame, I med one mizteg."
"Ah,non, Miché!"
"Yez. There har nod one poss'bil'ty fo' me to be dad guardian of you' daughteh!"
Madame Delphine started with surprise and alarm.
"There is ondly one wad can be," he continued.
"But oo, Miché?"
"God."
"Ah, Miché Vignevielle——" She looked at him appealingly.
"I don' goin' to dizzerd you, Madame Carraze," he said.
She lifted her eyes. They filled. She shook her head, a tear fell, she bit her lip, smiled, and suddenly dropped her face into both hands, sat down upon the bench and wept until she shook.
"You dunno wad I mean, Madame Carraze?"
She did not know.
"I mean dad guardian of you' daughteh godd to fine 'er now one 'uzban'; an' noboddie are hable to do dad egceb de good God 'imsev. But, Madame, I tell you wad I do."
She rose up. He continued:
"Go h-open you' owze; I fin' you' daughteh dad' uzban'."
Madame Delphine was a helpless, timid thing; but her eyes showed she was about to resent this offer. Monsieur Vignevielle put forth his hand—it touched her shoulder—and said, kindly still, and without eagerness.
"One w'ite man, Madame; 'tis prattycabble. Iknow'tis prattycabble. One w'ite jantleman,Madame. You can truz me. I goin' fedge 'im. H-ondly you go h-open you' owze."
Madame Delphine looked down, twining her handkerchief among her fingers.
He repeated his proposition.
"You will come firz by you'se'f?" she asked.
"Iv you wand."
She lifted up once more her eye of faith. That was her answer.
"Come," he said, gently, "I wan' sen' some bird ad you' lill' gal."
And they went away, Madame Delphine's spirit grown so exaltedly bold that she said as they went, though a violent blush followed her words:
"Miché Vignevielle, I thing Père Jerome mighd be ab'e to tell you someboddie."
Madame Delphine found her house neither burned nor rifled.
"Ah! ma piti sans popa! Ah! my little fatherless one!" Her faded bonnet fell back between her shoulders, hanging on by the strings, and her dropped basket, with its "few lill'bécassines-de-mer" dangling from the handle, rolled out its okra and soup-joint upon the floor. "Ma piti! kiss!—kiss!—kiss!"
"But is it good news you have, or bad?" cried the girl, a fourth or fifth time.
"Dieu sait, ma c'ère; mo pas conné!"—God knows, my darling; I cannot tell!
The mother dropped into a chair, covered her face with her apron, and burst into tears, then looked up with an effort to smile, and wept afresh.
"What have you been doing?" asked the daughter, in a long-drawn, fondling tone. She leaned forward and unfastened her mother's bonnet-strings. "Why do you cry?"
"For nothing at all, my darling; for nothing—I am such a fool."
The girl's eyes filled. The mother looked up into her face and said:
"No, it is nothing, nothing, only that—" turning her head from side to side with a slow, emotional emphasis, "Miché Vignevielle is the best—bestman on the good Lord's earth!"
Olive drew a chair close to her mother, sat down and took the little yellow hands into her own white lap, and looked tenderly into her eyes. Madame Delphine felt herself yielding; she must make a show of telling something:
"He sent you those birds!"
The girl drew her face back a little. The little woman turned away, trying in vain to hide her tearful smile, and they laughed together, Olive mingling a daughter's fond kiss with her laughter.
"There is something else," she said, "and you shall tell me."
"Yes," replied Madame Delphine, "only let me get composed."
But she did not get so. Later in the morning she came to Olive with the timid yet startling proposal that they would do what they could to brighten up the long-neglected front room. Olive was mystified and troubled, but consented, and thereupon the mother's spirits rose.
The work began, and presently ensued all the thumping, the trundling, the lifting and letting down, the raising and swallowing of dust, and the smells of turpentine, brass, pumice and woollen rags that go to characterize a housekeeper'sémeute; and still, as the work progressed, Madame Delphine's heart grew light, and her little black eyes sparkled.
"We like a clean parlor, my daughter, even though no one is ever coming to see us, eh?" she said, as entering the apartment she at last sat down, late in the afternoon. She had put on her best attire.
Olive was not there to reply. The mother called but got no answer. She rose with an uneasy heart, and met her a few steps beyond the door that opened into the garden, in a path which came up from an old latticed bower. Olive was approaching slowly, her face pale and wild. There was an agony of hostile dismay in the look, and the trembling and appealing tone with which, taking the frightened mother's cheeks between her palms, she said:
"Ah! ma mère, qui vini 'ci ce soir?"—Who is coming here this evening?
"Why, my dear child, I was just saying, we like a clean——"
But the daughter was desperate:
"Oh, tell me, my mother,whois coming?"
"My darling, it is our blessed friend, Miché Vignevielle!"
"To see me?" cried the girl.
"Yes."
"Oh, my mother, what have you done?"
"Why, Olive, my child," exclaimed the little mother, bursting into tears, "do you forget itis Miché Vignevielle who has promised to protect you when I die?"
The daughter had turned away, and entered the door; but she faced around again, and extending her arms toward her mother, cried:
"How can—he is a white man—I am a poor——"
"Ah!chérie" replied Madame Delphine, seizing the outstretched hands, "it is there—it is there that he shows himself the best man alive! He sees that difficulty; he proposes to meet it; he says he will find you a suitor!"
Olive freed her hands violently, motioned her mother back, and stood proudly drawn up, flashing an indignation too great for speech; but the next moment she had uttered a cry, and was sobbing on the floor.
The mother knelt beside her and threw an arm about her shoulders.
"Oh, my sweet daughter, you must not cry! I did not want to tell you at all! I did not want to tell you! It isn't fair for you to cry so hard. Miché Vignevielle says you shall havethe one you wish, or none at all, Olive, or none at all."
"None at all! none at all! None, none, none!"
"No, no, Olive," said the mother, "none at all. He brings none with him to-night, and shall bring none with him hereafter."
Olive rose suddenly, silently declined her mother's aid, and went alone to their chamber in the half-story.
Madame Delphine wandered drearily from door to window, from window to door, and presently into the newly-furnished front room which now seemed dismal beyond degree. There was a great Argand lamp in one corner. How she had labored that day to prepare it for evening illumination! A little beyond it, on the wall, hung a crucifix. She knelt under it, with her eyes fixed upon it, and thus silently remained until its outline was undistinguishable in the deepening shadows of evening.
She arose. A few minutes later, as she was trying to light the lamp, an approaching stepon the sidewalk seemed to pause. Her heart stood still. She softly laid the phosphorus-box out of her hands. A shoe grated softly on the stone step, and Madame Delphine, her heart beating in great thuds, without waiting for a knock, opened the door, bowed low, and exclaimed in a soft perturbed voice:
"Miché Vignevielle!"
He entered, hat in hand, and with that almost noiseless tread which we have noticed. She gave him a chair and closed the door; then hastened, with words of apology, back to her task of lighting the lamp. But her hands paused in their work again,—Olive's step was on the stairs; then it came off the stairs; then it was in the next room, and then there was the whisper of soft robes, a breath of gentle perfume, and a snowy figure in the door. She was dressed for the evening.
"Maman?"
Madame Delphine was struggling desperately with the lamp, and at that moment it responded with a tiny bead of light.
"I am here, my daughter."
She hastened to the door, and Olive, all unaware of a third presence, lifted her white arms, laid them about her mother's neck, and, ignoring her effort to speak, wrested a fervent kiss from her lips. The crystal of the lamp sent out a faint gleam; it grew; it spread on every side; the ceiling, the walls lighted up; the crucifix, the furniture of the room came back into shape.
"Maman!" cried Olive, with a tremor of consternation.
"It is Miché Vignevielle, my daughter——"
The gloom melted swiftly away before the eyes of the startled maiden, a dark form stood out against the farther wall, and the light, expanding to the full, shone clearly upon the unmoving figure and quiet face of Capitaine Lemaitre.
One afternoon, some three weeks after Capitaine Lemaitre had called on Madame Delphine, the priest started to make a pastoral call and had hardly left the gate of his cottage, when a person, overtaking him, plucked his gown:
"Père Jerome——"
He turned.
The face that met his was so changed with excitement and distress that for an instant he did not recognize it.
"Why, Madame Delphine——"
"Oh, Père Jerome! I wan' see you so bad, so bad!Mo oulé dit quiç'ose,—I godd some' to tell you."
The two languages might be more successful than one, she seemed to think.
"We had better go back to my parlor," said the priest, in their native tongue.
They returned.
Madame Delphine's very step was altered,—nervous and inelastic. She swung one arm as she walked, and brandished a turkey-tail fan.
"I was glad, yass, to kedge you," she said, as they mounted the front, outdoor stair; following her speech with a slight, unmusical laugh, and fanning herself with unconscious fury.
"Fé chaud," she remarked again, taking the chair he offered and continuing to ply the fan.
Père Jerome laid his hat upon a chest of drawers, sat down opposite her, and said, as he wiped his kindly face:
"Well, Madame Carraze?"
Gentle as the tone was, she started, ceased fanning, lowered the fan to her knee, and commenced smoothing its feathers.
"Père Jerome——" She gnawed her lip and shook her head.
"Well?"
She burst into tears.
The priest rose and loosed the curtain of one of the windows. He did it slowly—as slowly as he could, and, as he came back, she lifted her face with sudden energy, and exclaimed:
"Oh, Père Jerome, de law is brogue! de law is brogue! I brogue it! 'Twas me! 'Twas me!"
The tears gushed out again, but she shut her lips very tight, and dumbly turned away her face. Père Jerome waited a little before replying; then he said, very gently:
"I suppose dad muss 'ave been by accyden', Madame Delphine?"
The little father felt a wish—one which he often had when weeping women were before him—that he were an angel instead of a man, long enough to press the tearful cheek upon his breast, and assure the weeper God would not let the lawyers and judges hurt her. He allowed a few moments more to pass, and then asked:
"N'est-ce-pas, Madame Delphine? Daz ze way, aint it?"
"No, Père Jerome, no. My daughter—oh, Père Jerome, I bethroath my lill' girl—to a w'ite man!" And immediately Madame Delphine commenced savagely drawing a thread in the fabric of her skirt with one trembling hand, while she drove the fan with the other. "Dey goin' git marry."
On the priest's face came a look of pained surprise. He slowly said:
"Is dad possib', Madame Delphine?"
"Yass," she replied, at first without lifting her eyes; and then again, "Yass," looking full upon him through her tears, "yass, 'tis tru'."
He rose and walked once across the room, returned, and said, in the Creole dialect:
"Is he a good man—without doubt?"
"De bez in God's world!" replied Madame Delphine, with a rapturous smile.
"My poor, dear friend," said the priest, "I am afraid you are being deceived by somebody."
There was the pride of an unswerving faith in the triumphant tone and smile with which she replied, raising and slowly shaking her head:
"Ah-h, no-o-o, Miché! Ah-h, no, no! Not by Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle!"
Père Jerome was confounded. He turned again, and, with his hands at his back and his eyes cast down, slowly paced the floor.
"Heisa good man," he said, by and by, as if he thought aloud. At length he halted before the woman.
"Madame Delphine——"
The distressed glance with which she had been following his steps was lifted to his eyes.
"Suppose dad should be true w'at doze peop' say 'bout Ursin."
"Qui ci ça?What is that?" asked the quadroone, stopping her fan.
"Some peop' say Ursin is crezzie."
"Ah, Père Jerome!" She leaped to her feet as if he had smitten her, and putting his words away with an outstretched arm and wide-open palm, suddenly lifted hands and eyes to heaven, and cried: "I wizh to God—I wizh to God—de whole worl' was crezzie dad same way!" She sank, trembling, into her chair. "Oh, no, no,"she continued, shaking her head, "'tis not Miché Vignevielle w'at's crezzie." Her eyes lighted with sudden fierceness. "'Tis dadlaw! Dadlawis crezzie! Dad law is a fool!"
A priest of less heart-wisdom might have replied that the law is—the law; but Père Jerome saw that Madame Delphine was expecting this very response. Wherefore he said, with gentleness:
"Madame Delphine, a priest is not a bailiff, but a physician. How can I help you?"
A grateful light shone a moment in her eyes, yet there remained a piteous hostility in the tone in which she demanded:
"Mais, pou'quoi yé fé cette méchanique là?"—What business had they to make that contraption?
His answer was a shrug with his palms extended and a short, disclamatory "Ah." He started to resume his walk, but turned to her again and said:
"Why did they make that law? Well, they made it to keep the two races separate."
Madame Delphine startled the speaker witha loud, harsh, angry laugh. Fire came from her eyes and her lip curled with scorn.
"Then they made a lie, Père Jerome! Separate! No-o-o! They do not want to keep us separated; no, no! But theydowant to keep us despised!" She laid her hand on her heart, and frowned upward with physical pain. "But, very well! from which race do they want to keep my daughter separate? She is seven parts white! The law did not stop her from being that; and now, when she wants to be a white man's good and honest wife, shall that law stop her? Oh, no!" She rose up. "No; I will tell you what that law is made for. It is made to—punish—my—child—for—not—choosing—her—father! Père Jerome—my God, what a law!" She dropped back into her seat. The tears came in a flood, which she made no attempt to restrain.
"No," she began again—and here she broke into English—"fo' me I don' kyare; but, Père Jerome,—'tis fo' dat I come to tell you,—deyshall notpunizh my daughter!" She was on her feet again, smiting her heaving bosomwith the fan. "She shall marrie oo she want!"
Père Jerome had heard her out, not interrupting by so much as a motion of the hand. Now his decision was made, and he touched her softly with the ends of his fingers.
"Madame Delphine, I want you to go at 'ome. Go at 'ome."
"Wad you goin' mague?" she asked.
"Nottin'. But go at 'ome. Kip quite; don' put you'se'f sig. I goin' see Ursin. We trah to figs dat law fo' you."
"You kin figs dad!" she cried, with a gleam of joy.
"We goin' to try, Madame Delphine. Adieu!"
He offered his hand. She seized and kissed it thrice, covering it with tears, at the same time lifting up her eyes to his and murmuring:
"De bez man God evva mague!"
At the door she turned to offer a more conventional good-bye; but he was following her out, bareheaded. At the gate they paused an instant, and then parted with a simple adieu,she going home and he returning for his hat, and starting again upon his interrupted business.
Before he came back to his own house, he stopped at the lodgings of Monsieur Vignevielle, but did not find him in.
"Indeed," the servant at the door said, "he said he might not return for some days or weeks."
So Père Jerome, much wondering, made a second detour toward the residence of one of Monsieur Vignevielle's employés.
"Yes," said the clerk, "his instructions are to hold the business, as far as practicable, in suspense, during his absence. Everything is in another name." And then he whispered:
"Officers of the Government looking for him. Information got from some of the prisoners taken months ago by the United States brigPorpoise. But"—a still softer whisper—"have no fear; they will never find him: Jean Thompson and Evariste Varrillat have hid him away too well for that."
The Saturday following was a very beautiful day. In the morning a light fall of rain had passed across the town, and all the afternoon you could see signs, here and there upon the horizon, of other showers. The ground was dry again, while the breeze was cool and sweet, smelling of wet foliage and bringing sunshine and shade in frequent and very pleasing alternation.
There was a walk in Père Jerome's little garden, of which we have not spoken, off on the right side of the cottage, with his chamber window at one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche stooda small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a great comfort to Père Jerome.
Up and down this path, but a few steps in its entire length, the priest was walking, taking the air for a few moments after a prolonged sitting in the confessional. Penitents had been numerous this afternoon. He was thinking of Ursin. The officers of the Government had not found him, nor had Père Jerome seen him; yet he believed they had, in a certain indirect way, devised a simple project by which they could at any time "figs dad law," providing only that these Government officials would give over their search; for, though he had not seen the fugitive, Madame Delphine had seen him, and had been the vehicle of communication between them. There was an orange-tree, where a mocking-bird was wont to sing and a girl in white to walk, that the detectives wot not of. The law was to be "figs" by the departure of the three frequenters of the jasmine-scented garden in one shipto France, where the law offered no obstacles.
It seemed moderately certain to those in search of Monsieur Vignevielle (and it was true) that Jean and Evariste were his harborers; but for all that the hunt, even for clues, was vain. The little banking establishment had not been disturbed. Jean Thompson had told the searchers certain facts about it, and about its gentle proprietor as well, that persuaded them to make no move against the concern, if the same relations did not even induce a relaxation of their efforts for his personal discovery.
Père Jerome was walking to and fro, with his hands behind him, pondering these matters. He had paused a moment at the end of the walk furthest from his window, and was looking around upon the sky, when, turning, he beheld a closely veiled female figure standing at the other end, and knew instantly that it was Olive.
She came forward quickly and with evident eagerness.
"I came to confession," she said, breathing hurriedly, the excitement in her eyes shining through her veil, "but I find I am too late."
"There is no too late or too early for that; I am always ready," said the priest. "But how is your mother?"
"Ah!—--"
Her voice failed.
"More trouble?"
"Ah, sir, I havemadetrouble. Oh, Père Jerome, I am bringing so much trouble upon my poor mother!"
Père Jerome moved slowly toward the house, with his eyes cast down, the veiled girl at his side.
"It is not your fault," he presently said. And after another pause: "I thought it was all arranged."
He looked up and could see, even through the veil, her crimson blush.
"Oh, no," she replied, in a low, despairing voice, dropping her face.
"What is the difficulty?" asked the priest, stopping in the angle of the path, where it turned toward the front of the house.
She averted her face, and began picking the thin scales of bark from a crape-myrtle.
"Madame Thompson and her husband were at our house this morning.Hehad told Monsieur Thompson all about it. They were very kind to me at first, but they tried——" She was weeping.
"What did they try to do?" asked the priest.
"They tried to make me believe he is insane."
She succeeded in passing her handkerchief up under her veil.
"And I suppose then your poor mother grew angry, eh?"
"Yes; and they became much more so, and said if we did not write, or send a writing, tohim, within twenty-four hours, breaking the——"
"Engagement," said Père Jerome.
"They would give him up to the Government. Oh, Père Jerome, what shall I do? It is killing my mother!"
She bowed her head and sobbed.
"Where is your mother now?"
"She has gone to see Monsieur Jean Thompson. She says she has a plan that will match them all. I do not know what it is. I begged her not to go; but oh, sir,she iscrazy,—and—I am no better."
"My poor child," said Père Jerome, "what you seem to want is not absolution, but relief from persecution."
"Oh, father, I have committed mortal sin,—I am guilty of pride and anger."
"Nevertheless," said the priest, starting toward his front gate, "we will put off your confession. Let it go until to-morrow morning; you will find me in my box just before mass; I will hear you then. My child, I know that in your heart, now, you begrudge the time it would take; and that is right. There are moments when we are not in place even on penitential knees. It is so with you now. We must find your mother. Go you at once to your house; if she is there, comfort her as best you can, andkeep her in, if possible, until I come. If she is not there, stay; leave me tofind her; one of you, at least, must be where I can get word to you promptly. God comfort and uphold you. I hope you may find her at home; tell her, for me, not to fear,"—he lifted the gate-latch,—"that she and her daughter are of more value than many sparrows; that God's priest sends her that word from Him. Tell her to fix her trust in the great Husband of the Church, and she shall yet see her child receiving the grace-giving sacrament of matrimony. Go; I shall, in a few minutes, be on my way to Jean Thompson's, and shall find her, either there or wherever she is. Go; they shall not oppress you. Adieu!"
A moment or two later he was in the street himself.
Père Jerome, pausing on a street-corner in the last hour of sunlight, had wiped his brow and taken his cane down from under his arm to start again, when somebody, coming noiselessly from he knew not where, asked, so suddenly as to startle him:
"Miché, commin yé 'pellé la rie ici?—how do they call this street here?"
It was by the bonnet and dress, disordered though they were, rather than by the haggard face which looked distractedly around, that he recognized the woman to whom he replied in her ownpatois:
"It is the Rue Burgundy. Where are you going, Madame Delphine?"
She almost leaped from the ground.
"Oh, Père Jerome!mo pas conné,—I dunno.You know w'ere's dad 'ouse of Michè Jean Tomkin?Mo courri 'ci, mo courri là,—mo pas capale li trouvé. I go (run) here—there—I cannot find it," she gesticulated.
"I am going there myself," said he; "but why do you want to see Jean Thompson, Madame Delphine?"
"I 'blige' to see 'im!" she replied, jerking herself half around away, one foot planted forward with an air of excited preoccupation; "I god some' to tell 'im wad I 'blige' to tell 'im!"
"Madame Delphine——"
"Oh! Père Jerome, fo' de love of de good God, show me dad way to de 'ouse of Jean Tomkin!"
Her distressed smile implored pardon for her rudeness.
"What are you going to tell him?" asked the priest.
"Oh, Père Jerome,"—in the Creolepatoisagain,—"I am going to put an end to all this trouble—only I pray you do not ask me about it now; every minute is precious!"
He could not withstand her look of entreaty.
"Come," he said, and they went.
Jean Thompson and Doctor Varrillat lived opposite each other on the Bayou road, a little way beyond the town limits as then prescribed. Each had his large, white-columned, four-sided house among the magnolias,—his huge live-oak overshadowing either corner of the darkly shaded garden, his broad, brick walk leading down to the tall, brick-pillared gate, his square of bright, red pavement on the turf-covered sidewalk, and his railed platform spanning the draining-ditch, with a pair of green benches, one on each edge, facing each other crosswise of the gutter. There, any sunset hour, you were sure to find the householder sitting beside his cool-robed matron, two or three slave nurses in white turbans standing at hand, and an excited throng of fair children, nearly all of a size.
Sometimes, at a beckon or call, the parents on one side of the way would join those on the other, and the children and nurses of both families would be given the liberty of the opposite platform and an ice-cream fund! Generally the parents chose the Thompson platform, its outlook being more toward the sunset.
Such happened to be the arrangement this afternoon. The two husbands sat on one bench and their wives on the other, both pairs very quiet, waiting respectfully for the day to die, and exchanging only occasional comments on matters of light moment as they passed through the memory. During one term of silence Madame Varrillat, a pale, thin-faced, but cheerful-looking lady, touched Madame Thompson, a person of two and a half times her weight, on her extensive and snowy bare elbow, directing her attention obliquely up and across the road.
About a hundred yards distant, in the direction of the river, was a long, pleasantly shaded green strip of turf, destined in time for a sidewalk. It had a deep ditch on the nearer side, and a fence of rough cypress palisades on the farther, and these were overhung, on the one hand, by a row of bitter orange-trees inside the inclosure, and, on the other, by a line ofslanting china-trees along the outer edge of the ditch. Down this cool avenue two figures were approaching side by side. They had first attracted Madame Varrillat's notice by the bright play of sunbeams which, as they walked, fell upon them in soft, golden flashes through the chinks between the palisades.
Madame Thompson elevated a pair of glasses which were no detraction from her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of a reconnoitering general:
"Père Jerome et cette milatraise."
All eyes were bent toward them.
"She walks like a man," said Madame Varrillat, in the language with which the conversation had opened.
"No," said the physician, "like a woman in a state of high nervous excitement."
Jean Thompson kept his eyes on the woman, and said:
"She must not forget to walk like a woman in the State of Louisiana,"—as near as the pun can be translated. The company laughed. Jean Thompson looked at his wife, whose applause he prized, and she answered by an asseverative toss of the head, leaning back and contriving, with some effort, to get her arms folded. Her laugh was musical and low, but enough to make the folded arms shake gently up and down.
"Père Jerome is talking to her," said one. The priest was at that moment endeavoring, in the interest of peace, to say a good word for the four people who sat watching his approach. It was in the old strain:
"Blame them one part, Madame Delphine, and their fathers, mothers, brothers, and fellow-citizens the other ninety-nine."
But to everything she had the one amiable answer which Père Jerome ignored:
"I am going to arrange it to satisfy everybody, all together.Tout à fait."
"They are coming here," said Madame Varrillat, half articulately.
"Well, of course," murmured another; and the four rose up, smiling courteously, the doctor and attorney advancing and shaking hands with the priest.
No—Père Jerome thanked them—he could not sit down.
"This, I believe you know, Jean, is Madame Delphine——"
The quadroone curtsied.
"A friend of mine," he added, smiling kindly upon her, and turning, with something imperative in his eye, to the group. "She says she has an important private matter to communicate."
"To me?" asked Jean Thompson.
"To all of you; so I will—— Good-evening." He responded nothing to the expressions of regret, but turned to Madame Delphine. She murmured something.
"Ah! yes, certainly." He addressed the company: "She wishes me to speak for her veracity; it is unimpeachable. "Well, good-evening." He shook hands and departed.
The four resumed their seats, and turned their eyes upon the standing figure.
"Have you something to say to us?" asked Jean Thompson, frowning at her law-defying bonnet.
"Oui," replied the woman, shrinking to one side, and laying hold of one of the benches, "mo oulé di' tou' ç'ose"—I want to tell everything. "Miché Vignevielle la plis bon homme di moune"—the best man in the world; "mo pas capabe li fé tracas"—I cannot give him trouble. "Mo pas capabe, non; m'olé di' tous ç'ose." She attempted to fan herself, her face turned away from the attorney, and her eyes rested on the ground.
"Take a seat," said Doctor Varrillat, with some suddenness, starting from his place and gently guiding her sinking form into the corner of the bench. The ladies rose up; somebody had to stand; the two races could not both sit down at once—at least not in that public manner.
"Your salts," said the physician to his wife. She handed the vial. Madame Delphine stood up again.
"We will all go inside," said Madame Thompson, and they passed through the gate and up the walk, mounted the steps, and entered the deep, cool drawing-room.
Madame Thompson herself bade the quadroone be seated.
"Well?" said Jean Thompson, as the rest took chairs.
"C'est drole"—it's funny—said Madame Delphine, with a piteous effort to smile, "that nobody thought of it. It is so plain. You have only to look and see. I mean about Olive." She loosed a button in the front of her dress and passed her hand into her bosom. "And yet, Olive herself never thought of it. She does not know a word."
The hand came out holding a miniature. Madame Varrillat passed it to Jean Thompson.
"Ouala so popa" said Madame Delphine. "That is her father."
It went from one to another, exciting admiration and murmured praise.
"She is the image of him," said Madame Thompson, in an austere under-tone, returning it to her husband.
Doctor Varrillat was watching Madame Delphine. She was very pale. She had passed a trembling hand into a pocket of her skirt, andnow drew out another picture, in a case the counterpart of the first. He reached out for it, and she handed it to him. He looked at it a moment, when his eyes suddenly lighted up and he passed it to the attorney.
"Et là"—Madame Delphine's utterance failed—"et là, ouala sa moman." (That is her mother.)
The three others instantly gathered around Jean Thompson's chair. They were much impressed.
"It is true beyond a doubt!" muttered Madame Thompson.
Madame Varrillat looked at her with astonishment.
"The proof is right there in the faces," said Madame Thompson.
"Yes! yes!" said Madame Delphine, excitedly; "the proof is there! You do not want any better! I am willing to swear to it! But you want no better proof! That is all anybody could want! My God! you cannot help but see it!"
Her manner was wild.
Jean Thompson looked at her sternly.
"Nevertheless you say you are willing to take your solemn oath to this."
"Certainly——"
"You will have to do it."
"Certainly, Miché Thompson,of courseI shall; you will make out the paper and I will swear before God that it is true! Only"—turning to the ladies—"do not tell Olive; she will never believe it. It will break her heart! It——"
A servant came and spoke privately to Madame Thompson, who rose quickly and went to the hall. Madame Delphine continued, rising unconsciously:
"You see, I have had her with me from a baby. She knows no better. He brought her to me only two months old. Her mother had died in the ship, coming out here. He did not come straight from home here. His people never knew he was married!"
The speaker looked around suddenly with a startled glance. There was a noise of excited speaking in the hall.
"It is not true, Madame Thompson!" cried a girl's voice.
Madame Delphine's look became one of wildest distress and alarm, and she opened her lips in a vain attempt to utter some request, when Olive appeared a moment in the door, and then flew into her arms.
"My mother! my mother! my mother!"
Madame Thompson, with tears in her eyes, tenderly drew them apart and let Madame Delphine down into her chair, while Olive threw herself upon her knees, continuing to cry:
"Oh, my mother! Say you are my mother!"
Madame Delphine looked an instant into the upturned face, and then turned her own away, with a long, low cry of pain, looked again, and laying both hands upon the suppliant's head, said:
"Oh, chère piti à moin, to pa' ma fie!" (Oh, my darling little one, you are not my daughter!) Her eyes closed, and her head sank back; the two gentlemen sprang to her assistance, and laid her upon a sofa unconscious.
When they brought her to herself, Olive was kneeling at her head silently weeping.
"Maman, chère maman!" said the girl softly, kissing her lips.
"Ma courri c'ez moin" (I will go home), said the mother, drearily.
"You will go home with me," said Madame Varrillat, with great kindness of manner—"just across the street here; I will take care of you till you feel better. And Olive will stay here with Madame Thompson. You will be only the width of the street apart."
But Madame Delphine would go nowhere but to her home. Olive she would not allow to go with her. Then they wanted to send a servant or two to sleep in the house with her for aid and protection; but all she would accept was the transient service of a messenger to invite two of her kinspeople—man and wife—to come and make their dwelling with her.
In course of time these two—a poor, timid, helpless, pair—fell heir to the premises. Their children had it after them; but, whether inthose hands or these, the house had its habits and continued in them; and to this day the neighbors, as has already been said, rightly explain its close-sealed, uninhabited look by the all-sufficient statement that the inmates "is quadroons."