Old Creole Days | Page 8

ship full of merchandise for one little book which
answered those questions. God help him to understand it! and God help
you, monsieur, and you, madame, sitting here in your smuggled clothes,
to beat upon the breast with me and cry, 'I, too, Lord--I, too, stood by
and consented.'"
Père Jerome had not intended these for his closing words; but just there,
straight away before his sight and almost at the farthest door, a man
rose slowly from his seat and regarded him steadily with a kind,
bronzed, sedate face, and the sermon, as if by a sign of command, was
ended. While the Credo was being chanted he was still there; but 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,