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:
"Père 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, Père Jerome! I wan' see you so bad, so bad! _Mo oulé dit
quiç'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.
"_Fé chaud_," she remarked again, taking the chair he offered and
continuing to ply the fan.
Père 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.
"Père 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, Père 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. Père 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, ain't it?'
"No, Père Jerome, no. My daughter--oh, Père 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, "yaas, '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, Miché! Ah-h, no, no! Not by Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle!"
Père 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, Père 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 Miché 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 Père 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 yé, fé cette méchanique là?_"--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, Père 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! Père 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, Père Jerome,--'tis fo' dat I came 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!"
Père 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 aw 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-by; 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 Père Jerome, much wondering, made a second detour toward the
residence of one of Monsieur Vignevielle's employés.
"Yes," said the clerk, "his instructions are to hold the business, as
far as practicable, in suspense, during his absence. Every thing 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."