Pere Jerome"s smile and exclamation, as some days later he entered his parlor in response to the announcement of a visitor, were indicative of hearty greeting rather than surprise.
"Madame Delphine!"
Yet surprise could hardly have been altogether absent, for though another Sunday had not yet come around, the slim, smallish figure sitting in a corner, looking very much alone, and clad in dark attire, which seemed to have been washed a trifle too often, was Delphine Carraze on her second visit. And this, he was confident, was over and above an attendance in the confessional, where he was sure he had recognized her voice.
She rose bashfully and gave her hand, then looked to the floor, and began a faltering speech, with a swallowing motion in the throat, smiled weakly and commenced again, speaking, as before, in a gentle, low note, frequently lifting up and casting down her eyes while shadows of anxiety and smiles of apology chased each other rapidly across her face. She was trying to ask his advice.
"Sit down," said he; and when they had taken seats she resumed, with downcast 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 it despondingly--"a cruel thing." The tears rolled from her eyes as she turned away her face.
Pere Jerome remained silent, and presently she turned again, with the evident intention of speaking at length.
"It began nineteen years ago--by"--her eyes, which she had lifted, fell lower than ever, her brow and neck were suffused with blushes, and she murmured--"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 in love. If your love was pure and lawful I am sure your angel guardian smiled upon you; and if it was not, I cannot say you have nothing to answer for, and yet I think G.o.d may have said "She is a quadroone; all the rights of her womanhood trampled in the mire, sin made easy to her--almost compulsory,--charge it to account of whom it may concern.""
"No, no!" said Madame Delphine, looking up quickly, "some of it might fall upon"--Her eyes fell, and she commenced biting her lips and nervously pinching little folds in her skirt. "He was good--as good as the law would let him be--better, indeed, for he left me property, which really the strict law does not allow. He loved our little daughter very much. He wrote to his mother and sisters, owning all his error and asking them to take the child and bring her up. I sent her to them when he died, which was soon after, and did not see my child for sixteen years. But we wrote to each other all the time, and she loved me. And then--at last"--Madame Delphine ceased speaking, but went on diligently with her agitated fingers, turning down foolish hems lengthwise of her lap.
"At last your mother-heart conquered," said Pere Jerome.
She nodded.
"The sisters married, the mother died; I saw that even where she was she did not escape the reproach of her birth and blood, and when she asked me to let her come"--The speaker"s br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes rose an instant. "I know 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 G.o.d", no! you would never believe she was my daughter, she is white and beautiful!"
"You thank G.o.d for that which is your main difficulty, Madame Delphine."
"Alas! yes."
Pere Jerome laid his palms tightly across his knees with his arms bowed out, and fixed his eyes upon the ground, pondering.
"I suppose she is a sweet, good daughter?" said he, glancing at Madame Delphine, without changing his att.i.tude.
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 had dropped upon a strange planet." He suddenly looked up with a brightness which almost as quickly pa.s.sed away, and then he looked down again. His happy thought was the cloister; but he instantly said to himself: "They cannot have overlooked that choice, except intentionally--which they have 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 once to 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 is sure: 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, "G.o.d knows."
"Yes," said the quadroone, with a quick sparkle in her gentle eye; "and I know, if G.o.d 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 rose and gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled. "I had such a strange dream," she said, backing toward the door.
"Yes?"
"Yes. I got my troubles all mixed up with your sermon. I dreamed I made that pirate the guardian of my daughter."
Pere Jerome smiled also, and shrugged.
"To you, Madame Delphine, as you are placed, every white man in this country, on land or on water, is a pirate, and of all pirates, I think that one is, without doubt, the best."
"Without doubt," echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawing backward. Pere Jerome stepped forward and opened the door.
The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon the threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair where the hat had covered it, and dark below, gently stroking back his very soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while Pere Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine"s eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor were of white duck.
"Well, Pere Jerome," she said, in a hurried undertone, "I am just going to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!"
"Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, Madame Carraze."