Old Creole Days Part 11

"What did they try to do?" asked the priest.

"They tried to make me believe he is insane."

She succeeded in pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s; 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 capabe 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 pre-occupation; "I G.o.dd some' to tell 'im wad I _'blige'_ to tell 'im!"

"Madame Delphine"--

"Oh! Pere Jerome, fo' de love of de good G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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 enclosure, 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 c.h.i.n.ks between the palisades.

Madame Thompson elevated a pair of gla.s.ses which were no detraction from her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of a reconnoitring 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 a.s.severative 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 every thing she had the one amiable answer which Pere Jerome ignored:

"I am going to arrange it to satisfy everybody, all together. _Tout a fait_."