OLIVE
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,
lack-lustre 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 doorway which led from Madame Delphine's house into her garden
was over-arched 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 those evenings, "why do you
dream so much?"
She spoke in the _patois_ most 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 been discovered, 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 medaeval bondage of the staylace;
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 the silence 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 knows _him_?"
"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 pa?_" 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.