Madame Delphine
G >> George W. Cable >> Madame Delphine"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 mere, 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, _who_ is coming?"
"My darling, it is our blessed friend, Miche 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 it is Miche 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! _cherie_" 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.
Miche Vignevielle says you shall have the 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 step on 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:
"Miche 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 Miche 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.
CHAPTER XII.
THE MOTHER BIRD.
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:
"Pere 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, Pere Jerome! I wan' see you so bad, so bad! _Mo oule dit
quic'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.
"_Fe chaud_," she remarked again, taking the chair he offered and
continuing to ply the fan.
Pere 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.
"Pere 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, Pere 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. Pere 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, Pere Jerome, no. My daughter--oh, Pere 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, Miche! Ah-h, no, no! Not by Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle!"
Pere Jerome was confounded. He turned again, and, with his hands at his
back and his eyes cast down, slowly paced the floor.
"He _is_ a 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 ca?_ What is that?" asked the quadroone, stopping her fan.
"Some peop' say Ursin is crezzie."
"Ah, Pere 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 Miche Vignevielle w'at's crezzie." Her eyes lighted with
sudden fierceness. "'Tis dad _law_! Dad _law_ is crezzie! Dad law is a
fool!"
A priest of less heart-wisdom might have replied that the law is--the
law; but Pere 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 ye fe cette mechanique la?_"--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 with a loud, harsh, angry laugh.
Fire came from her eyes and her lip curled with scorn.
"Then they made a lie, Pere Jerome! Separate! No-o-o! They do not want
to keep us separated; no, no! But they _do_ want 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! Pere 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, Pere Jerome,--'tis fo' dat I come to tell you,--dey _shall
not_ punizh my daughter!" She was on her feet again, smiting her heaving
bosom with the fan. "She shall marrie oo she want!"
Pere 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 Pere Jerome, much wondering, made a second detour toward the
residence of one of Monsieur Vignevielle's employes.
"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 brig _Porpoise_.
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."
CHAPTER XIII.
TRIBULATION.
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 Pere 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
stood a 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 ship to 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.
Pere 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 have _made_ trouble. Oh, Pere Jerome, I am bringing so much
trouble upon my poor mother!"
Pere 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. _He_
had 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, to _him_, within twenty-four hours, breaking the----"
"Engagement," said Pere Jerome.
"They would give him up to the Government. Oh, Pere 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 is_ crazy,--and--I am no better."
"My poor child," said Pere 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,
and _keep her in, if possible_, until I come. If she is not there, stay;
leave me to find 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.
CHAPTER XIV.
BY AN OATH.
Pere 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:
"_Miche, commin ye 'pelle 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 own _patois_:
"It is the Rue Burgundy. Where are you going, Madame Delphine?"
She almost leaped from the ground.
"Oh, Pere Jerome! _mo pas conne_,--I dunno. You know w'ere's dad 'ouse
of Miche Jean Tomkin? _Mo courri 'ci, mo courri la,--mo pas capale li
trouve_. 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! Pere 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, Pere Jerome,"--in the Creole _patois_ again,--"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 of slanting 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:
"_Pere 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.
"Pere 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 Pere Jerome
ignored:
"I am going to arrange it to satisfy everybody, all together. _Tout a
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--Pere 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.