Madame Delphine
G >> George W. Cable >> Madame Delphine"_Oui_," replied the woman, shrinking to one side, and laying hold of
one of the benches, "_mo oule di' tou' c'ose_"--I want to tell
everything. "_Miche Vignevielle la plis bon homme di moune_"--the best
man in the world; "_mo pas capabe li fe tracas_"--I cannot give him
trouble. "_Mo pas capabe, non; m'ole di' tous c'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, and now 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 la_"--Madame Delphine's utterance failed--"_et la, 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, Miche Thompson, _of course_ I 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, chere piti a 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, chere 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 in those
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."
CHAPTER XV.
KYRIE ELEISON.
The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm. The lamp
burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have
hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind. The lilies of St.
Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more
completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended
in the slumbering air. Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery,
with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door
which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the
confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and
rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one
entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band
of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence
that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years,
would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing
and in review of those slips and errors which prove us all akin.
The day had been long and fatiguing. First, early mass; a hasty meal;
then a business call upon the archbishop in the interest of some
projected charity; then back to his cottage, and so to the banking-house
of "Vignevielle," in the Rue Toulouse. There all was open, bright, and
re-assured, its master virtually, though not actually, present. The
search was over and the seekers gone, personally wiser than they would
tell, and officially reporting that (to the best of their knowledge and
belief, based on evidence, and especially on the assurances of an
unexceptionable eyewitness, to wit, Monsieur Vignevielle, banker)
Capitaine Lemaitre was dead and buried. At noon there had been a wedding
in the little church. Its scenes lingered before Pere Jerome's vision
now--the kneeling pair: the bridegroom, rich in all the excellences of
man, strength and kindness slumbering interlocked in every part and
feature; the bride, a saintly weariness on her pale face, her awesome
eyes lifted in adoration upon the image of the Saviour; the small knots
of friends behind: Madame Thompson, large, fair, self-contained; Jean
Thompson, with the affidavit of Madame Delphine showing through his
tightly buttoned coat; the physician and his wife, sharing one
expression of amiable consent; and last--yet first--one small, shrinking
female figure, here at one side, in faded robes and dingy bonnet. She
sat as motionless as stone, yet wore a look of apprehension, and in the
small, restless black eyes which peered out from the pinched and wasted
face, betrayed the peacelessness of a harrowed mind; and neither the
recollection of bride, nor of groom, nor of potential friends behind,
nor the occupation of the present hour, could shut out from the tired
priest the image of that woman, or the sound of his own low words of
invitation to her, given as the company left the church--"Come to
confession this afternoon."
By and by a long time passed without the approach of any step, or any
glancing of light or shadow, save for the occasional progress from
station to station of some one over on the right who was noiselessly
going the way of the cross. Yet Pere Jerome tarried.
"She will surely come," he said to himself; "she promised she would
come."
A moment later, his sense, quickened by the prolonged silence, caught a
subtle evidence or two of approach, and the next moment a penitent knelt
noiselessly at the window of his box, and the whisper came tremblingly,
in the voice he had waited to hear:
"_Benissez-moin, mo' Pere, pa'ce que mo peche_." (Bless me, father, for
I have sinned.)
He gave his blessing.
"_Ainsi soit-il_--Amen," murmured the penitent, and then, in the soft
accents of the Creole _patois_, continued:
"'I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to
blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy
Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned
exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, _through my fault, through my
fault, through my most grievous fault_.' I confessed on Saturday, three
weeks ago, and received absolution, and I have performed the penance
enjoined. Since then----" There she stopped.
There was a soft stir, as if she sank slowly down, and another as if she
rose up again, and in a moment she said:
"Olive _is_ my child. The picture I showed to Jean Thompson is the
half-sister of my daughter's father, dead before my child was born. She
is the image of her and of him; but, O God! Thou knowest! Oh Olive, my
own daughter!"
She ceased, and was still. Pere Jerome waited, but no sound came. He
looked through the window. She was kneeling, with her forehead resting
on her arms--motionless.
He repeated the words of absolution. Still she did not stir.
"My daughter," he said, "go to thy home in peace." But she did not
move.
He rose hastily, stepped from the box, raised her in his arms, and
called her by name:
"Madame Delphine!" Her head fell back in his elbow; for an instant there
was life in the eyes--it glimmered--it vanished, and tears gushed from
his own and fell upon the gentle face of the dead, as he looked up to
heaven and cried:
"Lord, lay not this sin to her charge!"