BIRDS.
Monsieur Vignevielle looked in at no more doors or windows; but if the disappearance of this symptom was a favorable sign, others came to notice which were especially bad,--for instance, wakefulness. At well-nigh any hour of the night, the city guard, which itself dared not patrol singly, would meet him on his slow, unmolested, sky-gazing walk.
"Seems to enjoy it," said Jean Thompson; "the worst sort of evidence. If he showed distress of mind, it would not be so bad; but his calmness,--ugly feature."
The attorney had held his ground so long that he began really to believe it was tenable.
By day, it is true, Monsieur Vignevielle was at his post in his quiet "bank." Yet here, day by day, he was the source of more and more vivid astonishment to those who held preconceived notions of a banker"s calling. As a banker, at least, he was certainly out of balance; while as a promenader, it seemed to those who watched him that his ruling idea had now veered about, and that of late he was ever on the quiet alert, not to find, but to evade, somebody.
"Olive, my child," whispered Madame Delphine one morning, as the pair were kneeling side by side on the tiled floor of the church, "yonder is Miche Vignevielle! If you will only look at once--he is just pa.s.sing a little in----. Ah, much too slow again; he stepped out by the side door."
The mother thought it a strange providence that Monsieur Vignevielle should always be disappearing whenever Olive was with her.
One early dawn, Madame Delphine, with a small empty basket on her arm, stepped out upon the _banquette_ in front of her house, shut and fastened the door very softly, and stole out in the direction whence you could faintly catch, in the stillness of the daybreak, the songs of the Gascon butchers and the pounding of their meat-axes on the stalls of the distant market-house. She was going to see if she could find some birds for Olive,--the child"s appet.i.te was so poor; and, as she was out, she would drop an early prayer at the cathedral. Faith and works.
"One must venture something, sometimes, in the cause of religion,"
thought she, as she started timorously on her way. But she had not gone a dozen steps before she repented her temerity. There was some one behind her.
There should not be anything terrible in a footstep merely because it is masculine; but Madame Delphine"s mind was not prepared to consider that.
A terrible secret was haunting her. Yesterday morning she had found a shoe-track in the garden. She had not disclosed the discovery to Olive, but she had hardly closed her eyes the whole night.
The step behind her now might be the fall of that very shoe. She quickened her pace, but did not leave the sound behind. She hurried forward almost at a run; yet it was still there--no farther, no nearer.
Two frights were upon her at once--one for herself, another for Olive, left alone in the house; but she had but the one prayer--"G.o.d protect my child!" After a fearful time she reached a place of safety, the cathedral. There, panting, she knelt long enough to know the pursuit was, at least, suspended, and then arose, hoping and praying all the saints that she might find the way clear for her return in all haste to Olive.
She approached a different door from that by which she had entered, her eyes in all directions and her heart in her throat.
"Madame Carraze."
She started wildly and almost screamed, though the voice was soft and mild. Monsieur Vignevielle came slowly forward from the shade of the wall. They met beside a bench, upon which she dropped her basket.
"Ah, Miche Vignevielle, I thang de good G.o.d to mid you!"
"Is dad so, Madame Carraze? Fo" w"y dad is?"
"A man was chase me all dad way since my "ouse!"
"Yes, Madame, I sawed him."
"You sawed "im? Oo it was?"
""Twas only one man wad is a foolizh. De people say he"s crezzie.
_Mais_, he don" goin" to meg you no "arm."
"But I was scare" fo" my lill" girl."
"n.o.boddie don" goin" trouble you" lill" gal, Madame Carraze."
Madame Delphine looked up into the speaker"s strangely kind and patient eyes, and drew sweet re-a.s.surance from them.
"Madame," said Monsieur Vignevielle, "wad pud you hout so hearly dis morning?"
She told him her errand. She asked if he thought she would find anything.
"Yez," he said, "it was possible--a few lill" _beca.s.sines-de-mer_, ou somezin" ligue. But fo" w"y you lill" gal lose doze hapetide?"
"Ah, Miche,"--Madame Delphine might have tried a thousand times again without ever succeeding half so well in lifting the curtain upon the whole, sweet, tender, old, old-fashioned truth,--"Ah, Miche, she wone tell me!"
"Bud, anny"ow, Madame, wad you thing?"
"Miche," she replied, looking up again with a tear standing in either eye, and then looking down once more as she began to speak, "I thing--I thing she"s lonesome."
"You thing?"
She nodded.
"Ah! Madame Carraze," he said, partly extending his hand, "you see? "Tis impossible to mague you" owze shud so tighd to priv-en dad. Madame, I med one mizteg."
"Ah, _non_, Miche!"
"Yez. There har nod one poss"bil"ty fo" me to be dad guardian of you"
daughteh!"
Madame Delphine started with surprise and alarm.
"There is ondly one wad can be," he continued.
"But oo, Miche?"
"G.o.d."
"Ah, Miche Vignevielle----" She looked at him appealingly.
"I don" goin" to dizzerd you, Madame Carraze," he said.
She lifted her eyes. They filled. She shook her head, a tear fell, she bit her lip, smiled, and suddenly dropped her face into both hands, sat down upon the bench and wept until she shook.
"You dunno wad I mean, Madame Carraze?"
She did not know.
"I mean dad guardian of you" daughteh G.o.dd to fine "er now one "uzban"; an" n.o.boddie are hable to do dad egceb de good G.o.d "imsev. But, Madame, I tell you wad I do."
She rose up. He continued:
"Go h-open you" owze; I fin" you" daughteh dad" uzban"."
Madame Delphine was a helpless, timid thing; but her eyes showed she was about to resent this offer. Monsieur Vignevielle put forth his hand--it touched her shoulder--and said, kindly still, and without eagerness.