Old Creole Days | Page 8

when, a moment after its close, the eye of Père Jerome returned in that direction, his place was empty.
As the little priest, his labor done and his vestments changed, was turning into the Rue Royale and leaving the cathedral out of sight, he just had time to understand that two women were purposely allowing him to overtake them, when the one nearer him spoke in the Creole patois, saying, with some timid haste:
"Good-morning, Père--Père Jerome; Père Jerome, we thank the good God for that sermon."
"Then, so do I," said the little man. They were the same two that he had noticed when he was preaching. The younger one bowed silently; she was a beautiful figure, but the slight effort of Père Jerome's kind eyes to see through the veil was vain. He would presently have passed on, but the one who had spoken before said:
"I thought you lived in the Rue des Ursulines."
"Yes; but I am going this way to see a sick person."
The woman looked up at him with an expression of mingled confidence and timidity.
"It must be a blessed thing to be so useful as to be needed by the good God," she said.
Père Jerome smiled:
"God does not need me to look after his sick; but he allows me to do it, just as you let your little boy in frocks carry in chips." He might have added that he loved to do it, quite as much.
It was plain the woman had somewhat to ask, and was trying to get courage to ask it.
"You have a little boy?" asked the priest.
"No, I have only my daughter;" she indicated the girl at her side. Then she began to say something else, stopped, and with much nervousness asked:
"Père Jerome, what was the name of that man?"
"His name?" said the priest. "You wish to know his name?"
"Yes, Monsieur" (or Miché, as she spoke it); "it was such a beautiful story." The speaker's companion looked another way.
"His name," said Father Jerome,--"some say one name and some another. Some think it was Jean Lafitte, the famous; you have heard of him? And do you go to my church, Madame----?"
"No, Miché; not in the past; but from this time, yes. My name"--she choked a little, and yet it evidently gave her pleasure to offer this mark of confidence--"is Madame Delphine--Delphine Carraze."
CHAPTER VI.
A CRY OF DISTRESS.
Père 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.
Père 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 Père 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 God 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