"My mother! my mother! my mother!"
Madame Thompson, with tears in her eyes, tenderly drew them apart and let Madame Delphine down into her chair, while Olive threw herself upon her knees, continuing to cry:
"Oh, my mother! Say you are my mother!"
Madame Delphine looked an instant into the upturned face, and then turned her own away, with a long, low cry of pain, looked again, and laying both hands upon the suppliant's head, said:
"_Oh, chere piti a moin, to pa' ma fie!_" (Oh, my darling little one, you are not my daughter!) Her eyes closed, and her head sank back; the two gentlemen sprang to her assistance, and laid her upon a sofa unconscious.
When they brought her to herself, Olive was kneeling at her head silently weeping.
"_Maman, chere maman_!" said the girl softly, kissing her lips.
"_Ma courri c'ez moin_" (I will go home), said the mother, drearily.
"You will go home with me," said Madame Varrillat, with great kindness of manner--"just across the street here; I will take care of you till you feel better. And Olive will stay here with Madame Thompson. You will be only the width of the street apart."
But Madame Delphine would go nowhere but to her home. Olive she would not allow to go with her. Then they wanted to send a servant or two to sleep in the house with her for aid and protection; but all she would accept was the transient service of a messenger to invite two of her kinspeople--man and wife--to come and make their dwelling with her.
In course of time these two--a poor, timid, helpless, pair--fell heir to the premises. Their children had it after them; but, whether in those hands or these, the house had its habits and continued in them; and to this day the neighbors, as has already been said, rightly explain its close-sealed, uninhabited look by the all-sufficient statement that the inmates "is quadroons."
CHAPTER XV.
KYRIE ELEISON.
The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm. The lamp burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind. The lilies of St.
Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended in the slumbering air. Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery, with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review of those slips and errors which prove us all akin.
The day had been long and fatiguing. First, early mass; a hasty meal; then a business call upon the archbishop in the interest of some projected charity; then back to his cottage, and so to the banking-house of "Vignevielle," in the Rue Toulouse. There all was open, bright, and re-assured, its master virtually, though not actually, present. The search was over and the seekers gone, personally wiser than they would tell, and officially reporting that (to the best of their knowledge and belief, based on evidence, and especially on the assurances of an unexceptionable eyewitness, to wit, Monsieur Vignevielle, banker) Capitaine Lemaitre was dead and buried. At noon there had been a wedding in the little church. Its scenes lingered before Pere Jerome's vision now--the kneeling pair: the bridegroom, rich in all the excellences of man, strength and kindness slumbering interlocked in every part and feature; the bride, a saintly weariness on her pale face, her awesome eyes lifted in adoration upon the image of the Saviour; the small knots of friends behind: Madame Thompson, large, fair, self-contained; Jean Thompson, with the affidavit of Madame Delphine showing through his tightly buttoned coat; the physician and his wife, sharing one expression of amiable consent; and last--yet first--one small, shrinking female figure, here at one side, in faded robes and dingy bonnet. She sat as motionless as stone, yet wore a look of apprehension, and in the small, restless black eyes which peered out from the pinched and wasted face, betrayed the peacelessness of a harrowed mind; and neither the recollection of bride, nor of groom, nor of potential friends behind, nor the occupation of the present hour, could shut out from the tired priest the image of that woman, or the sound of his own low words of invitation to her, given as the company left the church--"Come to confession this afternoon."
By and by a long time passed without the approach of any step, or any glancing of light or shadow, save for the occasional progress from station to station of some one over on the right who was noiselessly going the way of the cross. Yet Pere Jerome tarried.
"She will surely come," he said to himself; "she promised she would come."
A moment later, his sense, quickened by the prolonged silence, caught a subtle evidence or two of approach, and the next moment a penitent knelt noiselessly at the window of his box, and the whisper came tremblingly, in the voice he had waited to hear:
"_Benissez-moin, mo' Pere, pa'ce que mo peche_." (Bless me, father, for I have sinned.)
He gave his blessing.
"_Ainsi soit-il_--Amen," murmured the penitent, and then, in the soft accents of the Creole _patois_, continued:
"'I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, _through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault_.' I confessed on Saturday, three weeks ago, and received absolution, and I have performed the penance enjoined. Since then----" There she stopped.
There was a soft stir, as if she sank slowly down, and another as if she rose up again, and in a moment she said:
"Olive _is_ my child. The picture I showed to Jean Thompson is the half-sister of my daughter's father, dead before my child was born. She is the image of her and of him; but, O God! Thou knowest! Oh Olive, my own daughter!"
She ceased, and was still. Pere Jerome waited, but no sound came. He looked through the window. She was kneeling, with her forehead resting on her arms--motionless.
He repeated the words of absolution. Still she did not stir.
"My daughter," he said, "go to thy home in peace." But she did not move.
He rose hastily, stepped from the box, raised her in his arms, and called her by name:
"Madame Delphine!" Her head fell back in his elbow; for an instant there was life in the eyes--it glimmered--it vanished, and tears gushed from his own and fell upon the gentle face of the dead, as he looked up to heaven and cried:
"Lord, lay not this sin to her charge!"