Old Creole Days: A Story of Creole Life, Page 6

  CHAPTER VI.

  A CRY OF DISTRESS.

  Pere Jerome's smile and exclamation, as some days later he entered hisparlor in response to the announcement of a visitor, were indicative ofhearty greeting rather than surprise.

  "Madame Delphine!"

  Yet surprise could hardly have been altogether absent, for thoughanother Sunday had not yet come around, the slim, smallish figuresitting in a corner, looking very much alone, and clad in dark attire,which seemed to have been washed a trifle too often, was DelphineCarraze on her second visit. And this, he was confident, was over andabove an attendance in the confessional, where he was sure he hadrecognized her voice.

  She rose bashfully and gave her hand, then looked to the floor, andbegan a faltering speech, with a swallowing motion in the throat, smiledweakly and commenced again, speaking, as before, in a gentle, low note,frequently lifting up and casting down her eyes while shadows of anxietyand smiles of apology chased each other rapidly across her face. She wastrying to ask his advice.

  "Sit down," said he; and when they had taken seats she resumed, withdowncast eyes:

  "You know,--probably I should have said this in the confessional, but"--

  "No matter, Madame Delphine; I understand; you did not want an oracle,perhaps; you want a friend."

  She lifted her eyes, shining with tears, and dropped them again.

  "I"--she ceased. "I have done a"--she dropped her head and shook itdespondingly--"a cruel thing." The tears rolled from her eyes as sheturned away her face.

  Pere Jerome remained silent, and presently she turned again, with theevident intention of speaking at length.

  "It began nineteen years ago--by"--her eyes, which she had lifted, felllower than ever, her brow and neck were suffused with blushes, and shemurmured--"I fell in love."

  She said no more, and by and by Pere Jerome replied:

  "Well, Madame Delphine, to love is the right of every soul. I believe inlove. If your love was pure and lawful I am sure your angel guardiansmiled upon you; and if it was not, I cannot say you have nothing toanswer for, and yet I think God may have said 'She is a quadroone; allthe rights of her womanhood trampled in the mire, sin made easy toher--almost compulsory,--charge it to account of whom it may concern.'"

  "No, no!" said Madame Delphine, looking up quickly, "some of it mightfall upon"--Her eyes fell, and she commenced biting her lips andnervously pinching little folds in her skirt. "He was good--as good asthe law would let him be--better, indeed, for he left me property, whichreally the strict law does not allow. He loved our little daughter verymuch. He wrote to his mother and sisters, owning all his error andasking them to take the child and bring her up. I sent her to them whenhe died, which was soon after, and did not see my child for sixteenyears. But we wrote to each other all the time, and she loved me. Andthen--at last"--Madame Delphine ceased speaking, but went on diligentlywith her agitated fingers, turning down foolish hems lengthwise of herlap.

  "At last your mother-heart conquered," said Pere Jerome.

  She nodded.

  "The sisters married, the mother died; I saw that even where she was shedid not escape the reproach of her birth and blood, and when she askedme to let her come"--The speaker's brimming eyes rose an instant. "Iknow it was wicked, but--I said, come."

  The tears dripped through her hands upon her dress.

  "Was it she who was with you last Sunday?"

  "Yes."

  "And now you do not know what to do with her?"

  "_Ah! c'est ca oui_!--that is it."

  "Does she look like you, Madame Delphine?"

  "Oh, thank God", no! you would never believe she was my daughter, she iswhite and beautiful!"

  "You thank God for that which is your main difficulty, Madame Delphine."

  "Alas! yes."

  Pere Jerome laid his palms tightly across his knees with his arms bowedout, and fixed his eyes upon the ground, pondering.

  "I suppose she is a sweet, good daughter?" said he, glancing at MadameDelphine, without changing his attitude.

  Her answer was to raise her eyes rapturously.

  "Which gives us the dilemma in its fullest force," said the priest,speaking as if to the floor. "She has no more place than if she haddropped upon a strange planet." He suddenly looked up with a brightnesswhich almost as quickly passed away, and then he looked down again. Hishappy thought was the cloister; but he instantly said to himself: "Theycannot have overlooked that choice, except intentionally--which theyhave a right to do." He could do nothing but shake his head.

  "And suppose you should suddenly die," he said; he wanted to get at onceto the worst.

  The woman made a quick gesture, and buried her head in her handkerchief,with the stifled cry:

  "Oh, Olive, my daughter!"

  "Well, Madame Delphine," said Pere Jerome, more buoyantly, "one thing issure: we _must_ find a way out of this trouble."

  "Ah!" she exclaimed, looking heavenward, "if it might be!"

  "But it must be!" said the priest.

  "But how shall it be?" asked the desponding woman.

  "Ah!" said Pere Jerome, with a shrug, "God knows."

  "Yes," said the quadroone, with a quick sparkle in her gentle eye; "andI know, if God would tell anybody, He would tell you!"

  The priest smiled and rose.

  "Do you think so? Well, leave me to think of it. I will ask Him."

  "And He will tell you!" she replied. "And He will bless you!" She roseand gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled. "I had such a strangedream," she said, backing toward the door.

  "Yes?"

  "Yes. I got my troubles all mixed up with your sermon. I dreamed I madethat pirate the guardian of my daughter."

  Pere Jerome smiled also, and shrugged.

  "To you, Madame Delphine, as you are placed, every white man in thiscountry, on land or on water, is a pirate, and of all pirates, I thinkthat one is, without doubt, the best."

  "Without doubt," echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawingbackward. Pere Jerome stepped forward and opened the door.

  The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon thethreshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, liftingfrom his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fairwhere the hat had covered it, and dark below, gently stroking back hisvery soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, whilePere Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a largerhand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine'seyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitorwere of white duck.

  "Well, Pere Jerome," she said, in a hurried undertone, "I am just goingto say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!"

  "Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, MadameCarraze."

  And as she departed, the priest turned to the newcomer and extended bothhands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had beenaddressing the quadroone:

  "Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!"

  They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playingwith the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, oftenmentioning Evariste and often Jean.

  Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to PereJerome's. His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar. Shepassed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other,her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the whiteduck shoes passed out. She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonadesuit.

  "Yes," the voice of Pere Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in thedoor--"Ah! Madame"--

  "I lef' my para_sol_," said Madame Delphine, in English.

  There was this quiet evidence of a defiant spirit hidden somewhere downunder her general timidity, that, against a fierce conventionalprohibition, she wore a bonnet instead of the turban of her caste, andcarried a parasol.

  Pere Jerome turned and brought it.

  He made a motion in the direction in
which the late visitor haddisappeared.

  "Madame Delphine, you saw dat man?"

  "Not his face."

  "You couldn' billieve me iv I tell you w'at dat man purpose to do!"

  "Is dad so, Pere Jerome?"

  "He's goin' to hopen a bank!"

  "Ah!" said Madame Delphine, seeing she was expected to be astonished.

  Pere Jerome evidently longed to tell something that was best keptsecret; he repressed the impulse, but his heart had to say something. Hethrew forward one hand and looking pleasantly at Madame Delphine, withhis lips dropped apart, clenched his extended hand and thrusting ittoward the ground, said in a solemn undertone:

  "He is God's own banker, Madame Delphine."