It was one of those southern nights under whose spell all the sterner energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by the genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was still again, as if the breezes lifted their expectant pinions and lowered them once more, awaiting the rising of the moon in a silence which fell upon the fields, the roads, the gardens, the walls, and the suburban and half-suburban streets, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose.
Monsieur Vignevielle"s steps were bent toward the more central part of the town, and he was presently pa.s.sing along a high, close, board-fence, on the right hand side of the way, when, just within this enclosure, and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the pa.s.ser"s attention, but he paused and looked up.
And then he remarked something more,--that the air where he had stopped was filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. He looked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate just there. Would he push it, as his wont was? The gra.s.s was growing about it in a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. An iron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into the gate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithing business--an eye which had later received high training as an eye for fastenings--fell upon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood had shrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without falling out. The strange habit a.s.serted itself; he laid his large hand upon the cross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was drawn partly open.
At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door or gate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image of whose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it had met him in his life"s path and turned him face about from the way of destruction.
The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within the opening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, a broad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-trees and tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded sh.e.l.l, the coco-gra.s.s and crab-gra.s.s had spread riotously, and st.u.r.dy weeds stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There, very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had tempted him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from him in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, and escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door of the house might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon his ear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the broken sh.e.l.ls--one only, and then all was for a moment still again. Had he mistaken? No.
The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale glimpse of robes came through the tangle, and then, plainly to view, appeared an outline--a presence--a form--a spirit--a girl!
From throat to instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her temples,--her arms, half hid in a snowy mist of sleeve, let down to guide her spotless skirts free from the dewy touch of the gra.s.s,--straight down the path she came!
Will she stop? Will she turn aside? Will she espy the dark form in the deep shade of the orange, and, with one piercing scream, wheel and vanish? She draws near. She approaches the jasmine; she raises her arms, the sleeves falling like a vapor down to the shoulders; rises upon tiptoe, and plucks a spray. O Memory! Can it be? _Can it be_? Is this his quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to Monsieur Vignevielle the unsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she is now, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon will shine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to do that. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neck and throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mockingbird cannot withhold; he breaks into song--she turns--she turns her face--it is she, it is she! Madame Delphine"s daughter is the girl he met on the ship.
CHAPTER IX.
OLIVE
She was just pa.s.sing 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-l.u.s.tre beauty of the South; no ruddiness of coral, no waxen white, no pink of sh.e.l.l; 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 sh.e.l.l 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 c.r.a.pe-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.
"_Cherie_," 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 ma.s.ses, quite black in the moonlight, hung down and coiled upon the bench, by her side. Her chaste drapery was of that revived cla.s.sic order which the world of fashion was again laying aside to re-a.s.sume 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 G.o.ddess 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere--I wish I was as good as Pere 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately.
"I have n.o.body 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.
CHAPTER X.
BIRDS.
Monsieur Vigneville 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.