Monsieur Motte/Chapter 4

by Grace Elizabeth King

Marriage of Marie Modeste.

Marriage of Marie Modeste.

"ARCÉLITE! but where is Marcélite? Send Marcélite to the parlor," called Madame Goupilleau to a passing servant. "Continue, Sister, continue; I am listening."

And the low voice of the Sister of Charity poured forth such a tale of asylum necessities mingled with asylum gossip, that Madame Goupilleau was carried away again into forgetfulness of both Marcélite and the parlor.

"Is it possible! I can hardly believe it!"

The Sister had asked but for one moment in the corridor, but she had underestimated the length, and Madame Goupilleau the interest of her budget. It sounded almost like a scandal in the church, a deplorable thing of infinite interest to all good Christians. Not until the volubly grateful itinerant disappeared with replenishment of her asylum's particular lack and exhaustion of its particular grievance, did duty recall with painful jerk the chaperon to her charge.

"Ah! simpleton that I am! and I have vowed and vowed never to see those tiresome Sisters again."

She ran along the corridor to save what time she could, her long skirts rustling after her, holding her head with both hands and scolding it well. Without stopping she entered the parlor. Too late! At the first glance she saw that.

"Tante Eugénie!" exclaimed Marie Modeste with quavering breath, as if waking from a dream.

"Madame!" apostrophized Charles Montyon, hurrying forward to meet her.

"Not a word! I know it all! It is my fault!" but she looked at them both reproachfully.

She had planned it otherwise, and far better,—this scene,—with a minute particularity for detail which only an outsider and a schemer in futurity can command. The young man would come to her first, of course, with his avowal, as etiquette prescribes. She would go to Marie herself, and delicately, as only a woman can, she would draw aside the veil from the unconscious heart and show the young girl the dormant figure of her love there,—love whose existence she did not dream of.

"My daughter," she would say. Ah! she had rehearsed the discourse too often to have halted for a word. At any moment of the night or day her tongue could have delivered it. "My daughter!" All that as a daughter she had once craved to hear and been disappointed of, and all that her exempt mother heart yearned to utter, she would tell. For she had a mother's heart, if by an error of Nature she had never been a mother.

But the event always fools the prepared. Now, she knew not what to say or do. She was in fact embarrassed. It would have been better to depend upon the inspiration of the moment. She sank into an arm-chair and fanned herself with a handkerchief which scented the air with violet perfume.

"I beg a thousand pardons. I did not intend; I had no idea—" protested the young man.

That was so; when she was called away they were conversing about the climate of Paris.

"Tante Eugénie!" was all that Marie could murmur; for the dream held her still,—a dream out of which she could not awake. Her eyes shone, touched with a new, bright light, and her white face swam behind blushes, appearing and disappearing like the moon behind thin clouds.

"She looks adorable, the little one," thought Madame. "If I could only have got hold of Marcélite, I would have sent her to chaperon them."

It was not pleasant to think that the vigilance which had guaranteed a whole institute of girls should damage its record in these simple circumstances. A pest on Sisters and asylums! "Eh, Mignonne!" She drew the girl to her to look into those wonderfully brilliant eyes. It was impossible; the lids closed so quickly, and the long black lashes fell so thick on the cheeks, curling up at the ends as if singeing from the hot blushes, that even burned Madame's lips pressed against them. The troublesome face finally hid itself among the laces on her shoulder.

"Thou art sure? Very sure? No mistake? là! là!" kissing her again. "After all, it is what I expected. And you, Monsieur," to Charles, who was standing close on the other side of her chair, "you have been indiscreet, as indiscreet as possible. You should have come to me first. You know that. Oh, no! I cannot pardon you, at least not immediately. Have you spoken to Monsieur Goupilleau?"

"Madame, I intended—"

"What! Not even spoken to my husband? But go downstairs this moment, this instant! He is in his office."

"I assure you it was unpremeditated—leaving us alone—"

"Ah! that is what I have always said; those Sisters do no good, going around from house to house—"

She was fixed and inexorable; would not listen to him, would not even look at him, resting her head against the tall back of her chair, directing her eyes into vacancy.

Behind her, discretion was again violated and outraged. The hands of Marie and Charles met of themselves, first accidentally and then purposely, and would not part. The eyes which had so much to conceal from Madame had for him abundant revelations, which the lashes did not hide, from eyes that caused her lids to rise merely by glances. Her face came out of the blushes,—a thin, white face in an oval frame of plaited black hair, the lips parted as if again in the tremor of caress;—Madame Goupilleau, with that big back to her chair, might just as well have been in the corridor again with the Sister.

"Tante Eugénie, I shall go with him. I, I—" She had to go, for the hands absolutely would not unclasp.

"My little girl is no more," thought Madame Goupilleau as they left her alone. "Well! Ma bonne!" to Marcélite, who came at last into the room. "Your young lady is going to make a fine marriage,—a fine marriage! Tiens!" interrupting herself suddenly. "I wanted you; where were you? I called you to go into the parlor to chaperon. Ah!—I see now. You were in connivance! What innocence I have, for my age!"

"Madame!" the quadroon's voice was apologetic, but her eyes were triumphant. "Such a good opportunity—"

"At least,—at least, you did not send that stupid Sister to me?"

"That! No, Madame! On my word of honor."

"In truth, I believe you capable of anything. What a rigmarole! the Archbishop and some Madame Houbi, or Hibou, and a priest of heaven knows where! All the while ce beau monsieur was on his knees to Mademoiselle. It is old Madame Montyon, however, who will have something to say," concluded Madame Goupilleau in thought. "She will beat a tocsin about our ears."

Madame Montyon, as expected, from the very first word of announcement resolutely vetoed any proposition of marriage between her step-son, her prospective heir, and a dowerless bride. When the young man came to her, the old lady was sitting in her room in the twilight, going over her accounts, which for convenience and secrecy she carried in her head,—a pleasant, wakeful occupation, adding dollar to dollar; watching the pile of gold, the concrete presentment of her numerous investments, grow in endless, ceaseless procreation. Her boudoir was as bare and simple as a soldier's quarters. There were no more effeminacies of culture or religion about it than about herself. She had asked no other assistance from Providence than a neutral position as to her affairs, which she managed as her father had his army, without intermediation of saints or intermeddling of priests. And no one could deny that her affairs had paid her the compliment of prospering under the régime.

"No, my son, no!" she reiterated, varying the formula not in the slightest degree. "Believe me, I know better than you. The young lady will not suit at all. In the first place, she has nothing."

"But, my mother—"

"In marriage there must be something; money is tangible, money remains; money is something, in fact—"

"Love?" he said, in a low voice, for it was novel to him, and he had yet to learn not to be shy of it.

"Love! Love! That for love!" snapping her fingers, which she could do with masculine effect.

And love was his theme, his inspiration, his reason; and love was her only dower! But it was like talking of God to an unbeliever.

"Be reasonable; listen to me! On my word of honor, as a woman who was not born yesterday, and who has not lived with her eyes shut, this crisis is temporary, momentary. She is not the only young woman in the world! enfin, I guarantee," raising her voice and her finger impressively,—"I guarantee that you will meet at least, at least, one woman a year during the next ten years of your life whom you will love enough to make your wife. Ten women! Ten wives! Mon Dieu! and I am putting it low. No! I can never consent."

The rebellious retorts, the marplot of their domestic intercourse, which always rose in his heart at the sound of her voice, crowded to his tongue now, but he had no temper to utter them.

"Love, my dear, it passes like everything,—only a little quicker." He was standing. She did not raise her head to him. She was speaking not to him alone, but all men. "Mon Dieu! This one will go like 'Good-morning'! "She kissed the tips of her fingers. "In point of fact, if you should marry Mademoiselle Motte now, and she should die, you would marry again in two years. Ah! don't jump so; don't exclaim at me that way. It is not my fault. I did not create men,"—shrugging her shoulders. "After all, it is only Nature; and Nature is another name for a strong, ugly animal."

How could she feel so! How could she talk so! He looked at her sitting below him, and for the first time tried to divest her of age, ugliness, and cynicism. She had been young once like Marie Modeste. Had she ever lifted her eyes to a man as Marie did, praying, yet dreading, his love? Had her warm hands ever got cold and trembled in the hand of another, as Marie's did? Had her slim form for one instant been in the arm of another—could first love ever be forgotten? Or was there one human being in the world whom this great ocean had not once enfolded, engulfed, drawn down, drowned beyond recollection, beyond comprehension of past, present, future, self, interest, money?

"And you think, you think— And women," changing the question, "can they not love? This young girl, Marie, she loves me, she has told me so." He laid his hand on her shoulder to accentuate his whisper.

The old lady's husband had married her for money, and had widowed her contemptuously during his life. She answered truthfully.

"If she loves you, all I have to say is that she will not be more disappointed now if you do not marry her, than some day if you do." His hand fell from her shoulder; he turned away. So old! So gray-haired,—and the widow of his own father! He had not a word to say. His dreams and fantasies were frightened away. How the young are tied and hobbled! their most innocent plans twisted, turned, thwarted by the skeleton hand of a dead father, or mother, or grandparent, holding a careful entail of unhappiness and disgrace. And there is no relief from the heritage! Flash after flash, illumination came in his brain along the dark spots of his ignorances,—spots in his father's and mother's life which thought had glided over before, which his manhood had respected; and the moment divulged connubial secrets, preserved so far by the miracle which preserves the simplicity of the young in a secretless, mystery-less world!

"I assure you, my son," his step-mother changed her voice briskly at the super-importance of her own business, "I am exceedingly pleased at the results of the Arvil succession. It is very good I came to attend to it myself. When we return to France—"

"Return to France?"

"I said, when we return to France. Then you will see the difference. You shall be installed en prince. Your separate establishment, your—" she checked off finger by finger her intentions for his pleasure and comfort. "Then you can talk of marriage, then you can select, then you will be a parti, and you can marry a partie."

"And Mademoiselle Motte?"

"Eh! Will you never be convinced?" frowning angrily. "Is Mademoiselle Motte a partie? Has she a dot? Has she even a family? The foundling of a negro woman!"

"No! No!" Her own voice could not have been louder nor more authoritative. He came around and stood close in front of her chair. Without thinking,—for his heart gave him no time,—he spoke, soon changing his tone and his words, for his audience changed,—the old woman and the chair fading away, and the young girl appearing, standing before him as she did this morning, transforming his defence into a tribute. It was dark in the room, or his face would have betrayed the vision. In the early, powerful moments of first love the real presence is carried around everywhere, and the sacrament of communion is celebrated by the heart, in any place, at any moment.

"Listen! Let me tell you, once for all. A war had broken over her country. Her father was killed in the first engagement. Her mother died as soon as the news reached her,—shot in fact and in truth by the same bullet. But one life was spared, a weak, wretched, frail infant, as if by a curse,—a girl to live and grow and develop in a detached condition. Her nurse, one of the very slaves about whom the war was being fought, aided the flight of the panic-stricken wife from her home on the approach of a noisy, victorious enemy, and received into her arms the child which was born an orphan. Orphanage, my mother, is what a child never outgrows; it is what God himself cannot remedy." His voice took intonations unknown before to him. "The nurse, a slave no longer, since she had flown with the infant to this city in the possession of the emancipationists, took the child to herself and nursed it,—nursed it as the Virgin Mary must have nursed her Heaven-sent babe; nursed it on her knees, in abnegation, in adoration; lodging it in her room, which became, not a room, but a sanctuary; couching it in her own bed, which became an altar; feeding it, tending it, as imagination can conceive a passionate heart in a black skin tending a white child under the ghostly supervision of dead parents. When the child grew to intelligence of its surroundings, when memory began, day by day, to weave together frail bits of history, then a fiction arose as if by incantation out of the rude, ignorant, determined mind of the nurse. She placed the child at a school, that the child's memory could not antedate. She gave the child a responsible white guardian, which the child's knowledge could not contradict. She took her forever out of the homely surroundings which love had made sumptuous and self-sacrifice holy, but which would eventually prove social ostracism. To maintain this fiction, patience, money, time were needed. Patience? Did a woman ever need patience for a child? Was money ever lacking, from an inferior to a superior? Time,—the good God gives the same time to the slave as the free, the black as the white, the ignorant as the wise, the weak as the strong. Patience fed the fiction, anticipated doubts, allayed suspicions. Money came in quantities sufficient to form not a shield, but a pedestal; and time took the little girl and led her onward and onward through an education, and through the experience which brings the necessary ingredients to the formation of a woman's heart. Time protected the fiction to the last moment; but—the last moment came. The basis of the young girl's life was suddenly withdrawn, and truth came, in the fall to the earth. With the truth came, however, the substance of what fiction had supposed. To the nurse came two willing associates. To the young girl, bereaved by the fiction almost as cruelly as she had been by the war, came parents,—volunteer parents. Ah! who could see her and refrain from loving her?" He stopped breathless.

"He raves," thought the old lady, "like De Musset! But she did not answer,—perhaps some hitherto unperceived merits in God's creation of men coming before her mental vision. She was only what experience had made her; her theories, like most women's theories, came from the heart, not the brain, and she had no imagination to beautify or make them palatable.

Love is a noxious grass for growth. One rootlet planted in the heart, and two beings are soon so tied, tangled, and knotted together by the miraculous reduplication of perhaps a single look, sigh, form of face, glance of the eye, that there is nothing for it but marriage, with the shortest possible engagement, to get the trousseau ready in; the creoles, wisely or not, prefering to apply the test of fidelity to husband rather than lover.

This was in winter. The spring approached, each day an incendiary to the heart, and all hymeneal. No one grows reasonable with the spring. The old lady felt the occult influences against her, and resented them,—the birds aggressively lusty, the sky bringing the roses out until the bushes threatened premature exhaustion from wanton prodigality in blooming, the moon acting like a venal Voudou charm. In a community where none but dowerless brides are born, love easily discounts money; and money was her only capital. She was left more and more in a helpless minority, fighting hard to maintain the solidarity of her resolution and fortune; daily reaffirming the one and intrenching the other by testament and codicil behind a bulwark of papers proof against the assaults of present generations, and unborn ones to the third and fourth degree.

The contract of marriage, her consolation now, was to be her substitute when she was gone, an unanswerable rebuke, a certificate of consent but not approval, a notarial monument to the wealth and generosity of the step-mother, the foolishness of the groom, and to all perpetuity a confession of poverty by the bride. It is hard to be rich, and a mother at the same time; but the old lady undertook the task. And while the young people were learning the necessary indispensable vocabulary of endearment for future intimacy, she applied herself to drawing with equal security the strings about her heart and the strings about her purse.

June brought the wedding day; for June brings more wedding days in New Orleans than any other month of the year. June by the calendar, and accredited for the forward month with hot suns and light showers, had peeped in upon every moon since December, confusing all meteorological rules, befooling the silly weeds as usual, and by unseasonable enticement into blossoming, losing the fruit-trees their crops.

In the forenoon hours, with their compliments and presents, came the bridesmaids,—all in one body, contagious with emotion; exclamatory, effusive, vibrating from the verge of tears to the verge of laughter.

"Ah, Marie!"

"Ah, chère!"

"At last!"

"Your wedding day!"

"You are well, chérie?"

"You are not frightened?"

"You do not tremble the least,—the least in the world?"

"Let me feel your heart!"

"It would paralyze me!"

"Such a beautiful day!"

"A little warm!"

An unconfessed but patent awe of her held them aloof. They stood together in a group, from which their sentences issued spasmodically in bunches. They had been schoolmates from their a, b, c class,—most of them; so had the mothers and grandmothers of some of them. Since short dresses and socks, mindful of their destiny, they had promised to be bridesmaids one to another. Or, death supervening, porteuses: to walk in white toilettes and white veils at the head of the burial procession, as this evening they intended to do at the bridal. An office so conspicuously desirable, this last, that it was made the subject of barter and bond; a matter of written and sealed documents, hidden in secret corners of their desks,—the most precious archives of their school life, though fluctuating annals of its friendships. Bride or corpse, how remote Marie Modeste was already on that road which they could travel as yet only in imagination. She was changing already. Taking the cue from their relative positions, they spoke disparagingly of themselves, meanly of their offerings, in despondent voices:—

"Nothing but a souvenir from your old Fifine."

"You won't forget the dunce of your class when you look at this, chère?"

"This has no value, Marie, but sentiment."

"Promise not to open this until I leave; it's a horror."

"You won't mind wearing this for my sake, Marie, you are so amiable."

"Chérie, hang this somewhere out of sight, but keep your faithful Louise in mind."

"I made this myself, for you; that's the reason it's so ugly."

"A little porte-bonheur for your new life."

"A little vide-poche for your toilette."

"A cushion for your prie-Dieu; I implore you do not look at the stitches!"

"You will not forget us, Marie?"

"You will always be the same to us, Marie?"

"We didn't learn our a, b, c together for nothing, did we, Marie?"

"And we didn't miss our cosmography together for nothing, did we, Marie?"

"Do you remember, Marie, when—"

"Or that day—"

They were actually beginning to have a past to talk about, like their mamans!

"Mon Dieu! how long ago that is; it seems like another life."

"Just about a year!"

"And Marie the first one married!"

"But you are engaged, Fifine!" they all cried. Fifine as usual persisted in a denial, absurd in the face of evidence.

"Well, Marie, I give it to you with all my heart." (Meaning the honor.) And they all kissed her again to affirm the sentiment unanimously. "Ah, you are very fortunate!"

"And he is so handsome, chère."

"And distingué."

"And such good family."

"Oh, he has everything,—everything."

"Was it a Novena, Marie?"

"Or our Lady of Lourdes?"

"Saint Roch?"

"Saint Roch! bah! He is old."

"Ma chère, they tell me there is a place down town, way down town, where you can obtain anything,—absolutely anything."

"If it had not been for that pretty toilette at Madame Fleurissant's ball!"

"That was the first time you saw him, hein, Marie!"

"Mon Dieu!" in chorus at her assent.

"I told maman my dress was hideous there."

"Three months ago! You kept your secret well, Marie."

"As for me, I would announce the first week."

"Like old Maman Birotteau; one hour afterwards,—one hour, that's positive,—she was in the street announcing Adelaide's engagement."

"To cut off retreat from the gentleman."

"Poor Auguste!"

"I will never get married, I'm sure."

"Nor I either; I never had any luck."

"If I do not get married, I do not want to live."

"Nor I, chérie, candidly."

"Not to get married, is to confess one's self simply a—a Gorgon."

"But it's a woman's vocation! What must she do else?"

"There is always the convent."

"The convent! bah! The convent doesn't fool any one."

"Non, merci! No convent for me!"

"I would rather comb Saint Catharine."

"Like Tante Pauline?"

"And tangle the whole town with your tongue?"

"My maman was married at sixteen."

"And my grandmaman at fourteen."

"Ah, but times were different then!"

"Women had more chance."

"And men less egotism."

"Frankly, I find men insipid."

This was too obvious an insincerity to be taken seriously; even the bride laughed.

"But we must not stay all day!"

"Yes, chérie, we must leave you."

"Adieu!"

"Au revoir!"

"Courage!"

"We will pray for you!"

They closed the door and went down the stairs to the corridor.

"But, you know, she is a brunette, and he is a brun."

"He should have been blond."

"Brown and brown, that is bad."

"Every one ought to marry her opposite."

"I adore blondes; they look so cold."

"No, according to me; dark eyes and light hair."

"Blue eyes and black hair,—that is my type."

"And tall, tall, tall."

"Oh, I hope the good God will send me a fiancé!"

"Dis-donc, Loulou, you are not engaged,—true? true?"

"No, unfortunately! No such good luck."

"No matter; the whole town says so."

"Ouf! how dark the parlors look!"

"They sign the contract of marriage at three o'clock."

"I hear the old Madame Montyon gives handsomely."

"On the contrary, I heard, not a cent."

"But what will Charles do for a living?"

"Work, like other men."

"A Parisian work? "Loulou mimicked his Parisian accent.

"He is not a Parisian, he only affects it; he is a Creole like all of us."

"And she has nothing."

"Not a cent. If old Monsieur Motte had lived, it would have been different." Referring to their school traditions of his wealth.

Vestiges of winter were still lurking in the damp, stone-paved corridor, chilling them a little before they got into the bright street, where a summer sun shone all the year round. The chill remained slightly in their hearts as they walked away, for beauty and youth were the only dower of most of them, and both were fragile; one year already had passed over their maturity, and patience is not a Creole virtue. Their aspirations being neither high nor many, disappointment need only come in one form, to be effectual.

The young girl who was so soon to be a bride sat alone in her room, in the isolation of retreat which custom recognizes as salutary if not needful,—alone, yet not entirely alone, for she had the spiritual companionship which comes in the solemn moments of life to the pure in heart, and permits them while on earth to feel if not to see God. A week ago she had passed her eighteenth birthday. Only eighteen anniversaries since her birth! It was little to form a separation from then and now. Looking back, she saw them rising, her birthdays, an ascending plane of mental and physical growth, until they culminated three months ago. That date had changed her: she was a woman now. Over her face had fallen the dignity which over faces of her type falls without crepuscular interlude, severing them from childhood as from a day that is past. Her dreaming eyes, wakened to look on life itself, not illusions fed by the imagination, were beginning to fill with women's wares, all on top and exposed, as good women's wares are, for the world to see. The inchoate sentiments that had held the mouth in vacillation were gone; the lips that had said "I love," had found their character and expression. But the body was still in arrears, still hesitating over the sure profit of a change, receiving yet from the long, thin, white gown the curves and mouldings it should have contributed.

She walked across the room to where the usual pictures of devotion hung on the walls. They had answered their purpose in her life, and were beginning to be useless. Her religion was no longer to be fed by symbols, but to produce them. But as she looked at them, holding in her hand the little worn prayer-book that had once belonged to her mother, they helped her to span the interval that separated her from her dead parents,—those absent guests represented only by proxies at all the feasts of her life. Her mother had once stood this way in bridal dress, waiting for him who was to become her husband and Marie's father. The virgins and sainted women from across the centuries made the thought plain to her, of the immensity of eternity and woman's vocation in it. Her heart throbbed and expanded under her novitiate's dress; she soared higher and higher in spirit; she touched immortality in vision. She felt the protecting hand of God,—God, the Father, who had carried her, an infant, through bloodshed, revolution, and disaster; had given her a nurse—mother, friends; had brought a heart for her heart from a distance, from the unknown, across an ocean! He had deprived her in youth, and saved the hoardings for a dower of love on her wedding day! She hid her face in her hands, to tell Him her love and gratitude.

Young girls who come into a world already prepared for them, from their layette to their trousseau, on their marriage day sit and think about the wedding banquet preparing for them, the costly presents, the beautiful dress, the new-fashioned wreath,—not of orange-flowers, but of blossoms more appropriate to the virginity of the rich,—what they will do after marriage, and what after that, sending their thoughts along blushing paths maybe too surely blazed by secret gossip or contraband literature. They do not feel their destiny like the young girls who are led along by God Himself,—patiently waiting in seclusion, poverty, and affliction the appointed seasons for knowledge, hearing in silences and darknesses divine notifications, receiving understanding with the intimations of futurity; the young girls whom He reserves for the good of the human race, to mother a Saviour, or transform the seed of a ploughman into the soul of a hero.

Marcélite entered the room and stood silently waiting, looking, thinking how best to carry out her intentions. "Mamzelle Marie!" She did not speak as the authoritative nurse to her charge; she was the humble servant of a future madame.

"Oh, Marcélite! the thoughts,—the thoughts one has!" It was so good to lay her head once more on the shoulder that had cradled her, a baby! so good to feel that soft, dark hand caressing her as it had caressed her all through life! For a moment she had felt strange and lonely in this glimpse of the new, foreign future. "Marcélite, do you know what it is to love? When I think of it, you know, ma bonne, I am glad that my—that Monsieur Motte did not live." How happy she must have been to pronounce that name again! "I wanted to die at first, I wanted it to kill me; but it is all gone,—that feeling," laying her hand on her heart and making gratuitous confession. "Think; if he had lived, it might all have been different. I might not have met Charles; and all this love I give him, and all the love he gives me,—what is the love of an uncle in comparison? God was right to manage it that way,—to send you to manage it for Him. And, Marcélite, all the time I was studying, I thought it was for my uncle; but I see now it was for Charles. Everything I did was for him. I believe I was born just to marry him. I am frightened now, when I think I might have died without it. It is grand to be a woman. Oh, I feel like a woman now; I know what it is to be a woman. God has told me everything." The low voice hardly carried the words to the nurse's ear, but her breath fell like the sweetest caresses on the dark skin.

"Bébé! Bébé!" was all the woman could say. Her own marriage in the far-off days of slavery,—what a thing it had been, not to be mentioned, not to be thought of, before her white child bride!

"Marcélite, do you think he loves me as much as I love him?" A question of supreme importance, requiring a long, rambling, but never-ending answer.

"Because, Marcélite, what do you do in life when the one you love does not love you?"

Although no one in the city,—a city of intrigue,—knew better than the hairdresser, she had nothing to say.

"Marcélite, did my maman look like me as a bride? And my papa, was he like Charles?"

"Bébé, Zozo!" Could human beings ever unite the beauties and excellences she described, or eloquence stray farther beyond the boundaries of truth?

"Their pictures hang on the walls of the house, there on the plantation; their books, their furniture—"

Pictures of what had been a pictureless ideal to her! Her orphan presentment of parents was no better than the blind one's presentment of sight.

"One of these days, Marcélite, you and I, we will slip away from home—oh, Charles shall not prevent me!" she blushed and smiled; she had never smiled that way before she met him. "We will travel to that plantation; we will walk through the fields, slowly, easily; we

will come to the gardens; we will go through them slowly, easily; you will be my guide; we will creep to the house, slowly, easily; we will peep through the shutters, and quick! quick! you will point out the place where those pictures are. Heaven! if I do not die in that moment, I will tear open the doors, I will rush in! If there should be dogs about! I hope there will be no dogs—"

She stopped suddenly. As if it were true,—all this! As if the nurse would not destroy a world to please her, or fabricate one to delude her into security! She knew the woman, and the extravagances of her heart. Almost, almost she felt as if she could give up her bridegroom that it might be true, Marcélite's story,—her bridegroom, and all the love that dazzled around her future like an aureole. She forced herself away from the thought.

"But what a toilette! What elegance! I never saw you so fine in my life before! No, stand still! Let me look at you!" She walked round and round the nurse. In truth, calico skirts could not stand out more stiffly, nor a bandanna be tied into more bows and knots. Simply to look at the new silk apron made it rustle.

"What is that you have in your hand? For me?"

"Bébé, you will hide it in your drawer. You will not look at it,—not yet. To-morrow, next day."

"Par exemple, I am not to look at anything to-day, it seems! Well, you for one,—you reckon without my curiosity."

She laughed as she snatched a package out of the nurse's hands. She had never laughed so easily, so merrily in her life. It was like the laugh of her old school companions, and sounded novel and charming in her own ears.

"Fifine, Loulou, Tetelle, all said the same thing. It is too absurd!"

"Zozo! To-morrow or next day."

"Bah! I am going to do as I please. I am going to open this. I am going to open them all, right now. You need not think I do not know what it is! It is my present,—my wedding present from you. And I have been expecting it all day, and I knew you were going to keep it till the last minute! Là! Madame Marcélite always takes her time! Madame Marcélite must always produce her effect! Ah, I know you, you ogre!" And she stopped again to pass her hands affectionately over the nurse's shoulders, which stood out like feather pillows.

"Now we will see what it is. A box, a work-box, a beautiful nécessaire. Thimble, see! it fits. Needles, scissors, thread,—evidently I am to do my own sewing in future. No more Marcélite to darn, no more Marcélite to mend. And another compartment underneath! A—h!"

The little compartment underneath was filled with gold dollars. At first one would have thought it jewelry. The nurse started more violently at the discovery than the young lady.

"It is what I have saved for you, Bébé!—for your wedding day,—ever since you were born, ever since your maman gave you to me."

Looking at the face before her, Marcélite tested another argument.

For a year she had not ventured to offer her earnings. She had uncomplainingly borne that the Goupilleaus should supplant her, the sole provider heretofore, but now—

"It was your own time, Bébé; I belonged to you: you have a right to it. Who made me your slave? God. Who made me free, hein?"

The girl looked stolidly, mechanically, at the box in her hand.

It seemed impossible for the quadroon's voice to become more humble, more pleading; but the words that followed proved that it could.

"Zozo! You don't mind taking it from me, from your Marcélite, your nurse, your own negro. No one will ever know it! I swear before God, no one will ever know it! Bébé, you must have a little money, just for yourself,—when you get married you don't know. You see, Bébé, they are strangers, they are not us, they are not Marcélite, they are not you. I could have bought you something; but I wanted you to have some money, some picayunes of your own."

It was hard to understand that the softness of her breath, the strength of her arms, the activity of her feet, the chained freedom of her whole life, could be accepted without dishonor, and not the money value in coin; hard for the girl to understand it, too. Her past life of unconscious dependence rose before her, humiliating, degrading her. Tears of mortification came into her eyes; the bright, beautiful day was tarnished.

"Only for the first few days, Bébé; after that, you won't mind taking their money. Oh, it will all be different after you are married, when you are his wife. What use have I got for it? I've got no parents; I've got no children, only you! They mustn't say you came to them without a picayune; with only your clothes in a bundle, like a poor unknown! Whom must I give it to, if not to you? To negroes? You think I am going to work for negroes, eh!"

There was something else in marriage than love? There were distinctions. She had no money; that made a difference! She was to take this, acquiesce in what conscience, tradition forbade, receive money from a negro woman rather than her husband. For the first few days—they, the Montyons, were rich; she was poor.

Gauging effect on the face of Marie, Marcélite saw that she was misunderstood, felt that she had blundered. She had come to the end of her argument with her cause lost.

"You won't take it! You are going to refuse it! You despise it! You would rather go to the Montyons for money than take it from me! I know, I know, it's because I am black, it's because I am a negro!" She closed her eyes over the tears, and her mouth over the sobs that shook inside her huge frame. It had escaped her,—the first confession of the galling drop in her heart. Gay, insouciante, impudent, she had worn her color like a travesty. Who would have suspected her?

"Marcélite! Marcélite! You must not talk that way! See, I take it, I take it thankfully! Have I not taken everything from you? You do me injustice. How can you reproach me?"

But it came too late to appease. The woman shook her head, flinging the tears savagely from her eyes.

"No! No! Throw it away! Pitch it out of the window! They have money,—the Montyons have plenty of money. Everything I do goes wrong; no one helps me. Even God will not help a negro!"

There was a rustling of skirts in the hall outside, a tap at the door.

"Tante Eugénie!" exclaimed the girl, joyfully. "I shall show it to her! She will see it! She will thank you too!" She bounded forward with the open box.

"Let her know you take money from me! Non! Non!" The situation was reversed. With an adroit movement of the hand the quadroon possessed herself of the box and hid it from Madame Goupilleau, effacing magically all trace of emotion except in her eyes, in whose depths feeling seemed to surge and roll like the billows of the sea after the storm has passed.

"It is time, mignonne! Come! They are going to sign the contract now. Oh, you will understand all about it when you hear it! It is long, and, ma foi! perfectly incomprehensible. It is in my head in such confusion! Marcélite, my good woman, go downstairs to the office, and ask the young gentlemen who are to serve as witnesses to have the kindness to ascend to the parlor."

Monsieur Goupilleau, the notary, was closeted in his private office with Mr. Morris Frank. They had been together the entire morning in an interview which was the résumé of a month's correspondence and a week's personal intercourse. The notary, glancing at his watch between sentences, saw that economy of words must be practised to conclude within the appointed time; his face was grave at the reflection of his miscalculation; perhaps a day or two more would have saved him the disappointment of his scheme and still rendered feasible his coup de théâtre, as he called it to himself.

The young German's face was grave also, graver than the notary's. It was a summary proceeding,—this thrusting not only a plantation in the balance, but, gently as the notary put it, a father's reputation also. If his father had only lived one year longer to answer and act in his own defence! In embarrassment of manner and words the young man had repeated over and over again:—

"Monsieur, I assure you, you do not know my father. He never made a mistake in his life."

The notary whose profession was officially to prevent the depredations of friends and relations upon one another, replied less as a notary than as a Frenchman,—

"Monsieur, a father never makes mistakes to a son such as you are."

It was a cruel predicament. The notary held a letter in his hand; continually referring to it with his eyes, he continually forbore reading it aloud.

"To acknowledge what you wish, criminates my father."

"Restitution is all that could vindicate him."

"There must be some law, some—"

"She is a young girl, an orphan; you a man, strong—"

A desperate last hope, and the swiftly-passing time, impelled the notary to seek this adjunct to his legal argument.

"A donation?" The young man asked eagerly.

"No, sir,"—Monseieur Goupilleau drew himself up haughtily,—"restitution."

Armed with decision, Monsieur Goupilleau began to read the letter in his hand, fixing his eyes resolutely on the paper and throwing his voice into the official tone of indifference to human interests, sentiments, and affections which is the mode of conveyance of notarial communications.

"You ask me—"

"You have already consulted a lawyer! I thought it was understood between us—"

"I have sought legal advice in a supposititous case, from an unquestioned authority," giving the source. "As you will see, no names have been mentioned." Proceeding with the letter, "'You ask me, Would it be possible, the owners of a plantation dying, both husband and wife, the first year of the war, and the nurse running away with the only heir, an infant, that the overseer of the plantation could obtain possession of the property and retain it, unmolested, unquestioned, for seventeen years? I answer, he could, by chicanery and rascality—'"

"Sir! Sir!" The young man rose excitedly from his seat.

"'If he knew the child was alive. Suppose at the commencement of the war the owners of the plantation were in debt to the overseer, say for wages, the salary of a year or more. Overseers often preferred letting their salaries accumulate before drawing them. The husband enlists, leaving the plantation in charge of the overseer,—a most natural arrangement. You say he is killed, the wife dies, the nurse disappears with the baby. New Orleans was captured in 1862. A United States District Court was established, having jurisdiction of the captured territory below the mouth of the Red River. Now the overseer, by going down to the city, if the plantation was in this territory,'—the Parish of St. James, as you are aware, Monsieur Frank, is within it,—'by going down to the city and giving information that the owner of the plantation was a rebel, an officer in the army, concealing the fact that he was dead—'"

"Monsieur! I cannot! I refuse to listen!" Morris Frank's face was red with anger, his eyes moist with feeling.

The notary continued, slightly hurrying his words: "'Could have the property seized, condemned as the property of a rebel, purchase it himself at the confiscation sale, paying a nominal price, say five thousand dollars, for it, which five thousand he would not pay in cash, but claim as a privileged debt the amount actually due, and make up the balance of the price by charges for overseeing, up to the date of proceedings. He could thus hold the plantation under an apparently legal title. No one but a child could contest.'"

"And the young lady?"

The notary's time was up. He was overdue upstairs with the contract.

"That point, I thought, was settled yesterday," said he, curtly. "Now, I must bid you good-day." He paused at the door; another thought came into his brain. For an instant he was embarrassed, undecided; then, dismissing his official character, and simply as an old gentleman with infinite worldly knowledge and infinite human sympathy, he laid his hand on the young man's shoulder: "My friend, reflect for an instant what the condition of the South would be at this moment were such titles to property as yours good; and,"—his voice sinking with feeling,—"thank God that by the Constitution of the United States no attainder of treason can work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." At a better recollection of his own family history, he said: "Children here are not punishable for the offence of an ancestor." Then, with a pressure of his sensitive fingers, he continued: "My boy, remember, restitution involves no confession. Fathers are but human beings like ourselves; when they die, the best thing we can do is to act for them as we wish they might have acted."

Mr. Frank also left the private office, but he halted in the next room, sat down at a desk, and pondered.

"Sir, I assure you, you do not know my father. He never made a mistake in his life. He was a man of unquestioned integrity." He repeated the words over and over again, as if the notary still could hear them.

Reared in the strictest of ecclesiastical colleges, where credulity had been assiduously fostered and simplicity preserved, his youth was passed in a calm world of perfect submission and perfect trust. In his uncritical mind the visible and invisible world rested on one vast quiescent billow of faith. His father, his mother, his plantation; as well question the saints, miracles, heaven!

The clerks from their desks looked furtively at him as he buried his face in his hands,—the face of a man in helpless anxiety of mind. He had come to the city only three months ago in a vague search for some unknown pleasure which his swelling manhood craved,—a pleasure not to be found on the plantation, in the green fields under the blue sky, not in the morning réveille to duty, nor in the tired languor of the welcome curfew. The luxury which parsimony had banished from his parents' lives had descended to him intact, principal and interest, with the inheritance to buy it,—a heritage to spend and a heritage to gratify. The beautiful young girls at that Fleurissant ball! His life had never held a ball nor a young girl before. Oh, the plainest one there would have been a queen in his home, a houri in his heart! His home! Which home,—the little whitewashed cabin near the sugar-house, where the sows littered under the gallery and the mules galloped by on their way to the stables,—the home of his birth, the despised overseer's house, exhaling menace, inhaling hatred; or the other home, the home to which he returned from college, the master's residence, the beautiful home which his father had bought for him, with pictures and books, glass and silver, carved furniture and silken hangings? "By chicanery and rascality!"

He had lived in the house, slept in the beds, studied the books. And the pictures,—ah, Nature had given him such sordid, homely parents! He had idolized these pictured ladies and gentlemen. In adoration, he had tried to fit himself, not for heaven, but for them. He had tilled the fields as their successor, maintained the manor as their heir. "I assure you, there must be some mistake; my father was a man of integrity." If he had not integrity, what had he? Could he, the son, have lived in that house else? And his father and mother both slept in the cemetery of these people,—these Mottes!

Ideals of marriage had come to him during the long evenings in the quiet house. In fancy he had often led a bride across the threshold of it,—a black-eyed, black-haired bride, like the black-eyed, black-haired women in the pictures; and imagination had gone still farther beyond, into those far-off dreams that lure the lonely into domesticity. The tears wet his fingers at the recollection of them.

Could his father have known of the existence of the child? That was all the question now; the plantation and the money in bank were a cheap exchange for the redeeming answer.

Searching wearily among the commonplace incidents of his child-life for some saving memory which would give testimony in favor of the dead, as one turns and overturns domestic articles in search of a lost jewel, the figure of a quadroon woman came suddenly to remembrance, clear and distinct,—clearly and distinctly as her voice now sounded in the doorway.

"Monsieur requests the presence of the gentlemen who are to act as witnesses."

Two of the young clerks, in gala dress, who had been scratching their pens sedulously in feigned indifference to the honor, rose with alacrity.

This was the woman who had run away with the child! Morris Frank arrested her, seized her by the wrist, and drew her in through the door of the back office. With an old instinct of fear she resisted and struggled. His father, the overseer, had not handled her color too softly.

"For God's sake let me go! What do you want? I haven't done anything!" she cried.

"Tell me, tell me the truth about that child,—about that baby!"

He questioned, he cross-questioned, he twisted and turned her answers.

"As there is a God in heaven, it's the truth! As the blessed Virgin hears me, it's the truth! Ask Monsieur Goupilleau, ask the priest, ask old Uncle Ursin on the plantation,—they all know it! Mr. Frank, Mr. Morris, you are not going to harm her! I kept it from you; I would have died before you found it out from me! She doesn't know it! No one knows it!"

The same old terror of causeless violence that had made her a fugitive eighteen years ago possessed her again, sweeping away reason and presence of mind, making her believe, with the barbarous anticipations of ferocity which had survived civilization in her, the tragic fate of the parents as immanent to the child.

"You swear it is the truth?"

"On the cross, on the Blessed Virgin, on the Saviour." All that was sacred in her religion, all that was terrific in her superstition, she invoked with unhesitating tongue to attest a veracity impugned with her race by custom and tradition.

---

 

It is not pleasant reading,—a marriage contract: stipulations in one clause, counter-stipulations in another; so much money here, so much money there; distrust of the contracting parties, distrust of the relatives, distrust of the unsophisticated goodness of God himself, who had trammels of every notarial variety thrown across any future development of trust and confidence. There were provisions against fraud, deception, indebtedness; provisions against change, indifference, enmity, death, remarriage, against improper alliances of unborn daughters, against dissipation and extravagance of unborn sons,—provisions for everything but the continuance of the love which had waxed and grown to the inevitable conclusion of marriage.

It was a triumph of astuteness on the part of old Madame Montyon. She sat on the sofa nodding her head and purple-flowered bonnet, at each clause repeating the words after Monsieur Goupilleau with great satisfaction.

"Ah, mon Dieu!" Mademoiselle Angely sighed at the end of it, not knowing anything more appropriate to do or to say.

"Those marriage contracts,—they are all against the women, the poor women! That is the way with Eugénie there. Old Lareveillère made a marriage contract against her; she had nothing of her own, and all her life there he has held her." Tante Pauline pressed her right thumb expressively against the palm of her left hand.

"At the last moment I thought," said Madame Montyon to herself, "that Goupilleau would have given her something; but that was not like a notary, nor a Goupilleau."

"If I had succeeded in my plans," thought Monsieur Goupilleau, "the favor would have been all the other way."

"Pauvre petite chatte!" thought his wife, as a last resource of consolation, "at least her children will be secure."

"We will now sign it," said the notary.

"But I must go for the bride," prompted his wife.

They seemed to have forgotten her completely in their excitement over the settlement of so much property and money,—both her and the young man who stood unheeded, unconsulted, in the corner of the room; his own insignificant personal capital of youth, hope, strength, love, honor, ambition, unmentioned in the elaborate catalogue prepared by the step-mother. It was all valueless as an endowment. Like an automaton he had been provided for and given over to his childish foible for a wife.

The noise of the street invaded the parlors, but genteelly and discreetly sifted of impurity by the fine lace curtains at the end windows of the long narrow room. The half-closed shutters gave oblique views of the gallery, with its iron balustrade and canopy, and rows of plants thriving luxuriantly. They had only contracted pots for root, but the whole blue heavens for foliage. There reigned the gentle obscurity which the people of the climate affect,—an obscurity that flatters rather than conceals the physiognomy, and tones the voices in soft Creole modulations. The green-glazed marine monsters of a tall Palissy vase collected the few entering rays of light, and rose a beacon over an invisible centre-table, which carried an indistinct collection of velvet-cased miniatures, ivory carvings, Bohemian glasses, and other small objects, which in Monsieur Goupilleau's days of extravagance gratified the taste for bric-à-brac.

There was a lull in the conversation. The occupants of the chairs and sofas devoted themselves to their fans and handkerchiefs, or put on eye-glasses to solve the enigmatical pictures hanging in oblivion, within gilt frames, on the walls. The moments of Madame Goupilleau's absence were slow, dry, and detached. What was said was hurried, indifferent, in an undertone, mere packing-paper to fill up space, each volunteer fearing to be caught with a truncated word or an unfinished smile on the lips,—the women of course alone risking it.

"Eugénie's rooms are really beautiful!"

"Can you see what that is in the corner?"

"An étagère."

"Ah!"

"I never noticed that lamp before."

"Where?"

"Right here at your elbow, on the table."

"Carcel?"

"And ciselé brass!"

"How warm it is!"

"I believe I feel a draught!"

"Mon Dieu! where?"

"Change your seat."

"There in the corner is a fauteuil."

"Who is that old skeleton?"

"Armand Goupilleau's confidential clerk!"

"Ah!"

"He will have to read the contract all over again!"

"Of course; the bride did not hear it!"

"I give them six months after the old lady's death to break it."

"H'sh! she'll hear you, Pauline!"

"Tant pis!"

"Here they are!"

"Poor little thing!"

"How pale she is!"

"And so frail!"

"Just like her mother."

"H'sh! they are going to begin!"

"Heavens! What a glare!"

"It is barbarous!"

Monsieur Goupilleau's confidential clerk was to repeat the deed,—an old man with sight almost beyond recall of double glasses. He stood as near as possible to the coveted daylight of the outside world, against the window, holding the paper as close to his eyes as his long thin nose would permit; it was still too far off for smooth reading. Profiting by the confusion succeeding the entrance, he slyly laid his hand on the shutters to widen the crack of light by the merest trifle; at a touch they all fell open from top to bottom, letting the sun in like a flash of lightning, striking them all with sudden distinctness, brightening the written page into delicious legibility. Before a countermanding order could be issued, before the bride could be seated, he began the lecture, overriding the protests of the ladies with his unhuman mechanical voice, cracked by use, ignoring the opened fans used as screens against his end of the room.

The young girl stood where she was. The sun falling across her head increased the fairness of her face and the blackness of her hair. She held her hands clasped before her, and seemed with eyes as well as ears listening to the terms on which she was to be admitted to the profession of her love. In the last hours of her innocent, unconscious girlhood she was pathetic, pitiful, to the ladies, who shed furtive tears. The gentlemen, at sight of her, felt a stirring in their hearts and conscience, or maybe the eyes of the married women present resurrected a primitive, latent, effete distrust of themselves,—a remorseful sense of unworthiness as conceded possessors of the other sex.

After the reading had ended, Marie Modeste still listened and thought, trying to make her head speak as distinctly as her heart had done.

"You will have the kindness to sign your name here, Mademoiselle," said the old clerk, delighted with his window evolution and the fluency of his rendition of the contract.

The young men from the office pressed forward alertly, under fear of the awful possibility of being overlooked. The ladies and gentlemen rose from their seats, and all advanced toward the centre-table, where a space was being cleared for the signing.

The young girl took the pen, which had been dipped in ink, and waited for the papers to be straightened out and pressed flat.

"Here, on this line, Mademoiselle." She placed her hand where he pointed, and bent over.

"No! no!" she cried, straightening herself, holding the document in her hand. Her face became red as she heard her weak, thin voice trying to raise and steady itself to audibility in the room full of strange faces.

"No! no! I cannot sign it! I will not sign it! I do not wish it! I refuse! I give nothing, I will take nothing,—nothing!"

She forced her lips, trembling convulsively, to utter what was resolutely being proclaimed in her breast.

"I give nothing but love! I want nothing but love!" and the elaborate act, the notarial work of a week, fell in long thin strips to the floor.

There was a sudden decline in the value of bonds and stocks and landed investments; Madame Montyon's hillock of gold disappeared for once from before her eyes, leaving them staring at blank poverty.

"Tudieu! Tudieu!" she swore, in her un-whisperable voice.

"The marriage broken! Ah, I knew it!" exclaimed Tante Pauline.

"Eugénie! Eugénie!" Mademoiselle Aurore Angely pulled Madame Goupilleau's gown. "But look at them! Stop them! It is not proper! It is not convenable!"

It was against etiquette which had held him in strict quarantine for twenty-four hours; but the young groom broke from his corner and his passiveness, as unrestrained as if the wedding were past and not to come, and his bride, turning, received him as if she had all the money in the world and he not a cent. Their embrace made all hearts and lips envious.

Mademoiselle Angely would have had to acknowledge at the confessional that it was not so much because it was shocking as because it was a sin, that forced her to turn her back on them.

The officious young witnesses sprang to the floor to gather up the fragments of the contract.

The confidential clerk, as deaf as he was blind, and equally conscientious, after showing the place on the document and giving the pen, was intent only upon closing the shutters as he had found them, and as slyly. The room passed again, without warning, into darkness, granting, until the eyes accommodated themselves to it, momentary shelter to the lovers and relief to the spectators.

"Ah! she's a fool all the same!" Tante Pauline found time to say.

 

---

 

"Come!" said Morris Frank, "take me up there,—instantly!"

Grasping the quadroon by the wrist, he followed up the stairs, through the hall, into a dark room separated by a portière from the parlor. Pushing aside the faded red and yellow damask, he stood, hearing, seeing all. The flesh and blood, the face, of his pictured hosts in the old plantation home! The black-eyed, black-haired girl! What did she need more than love for a dower? And her lover? What other capital did he need besides the strength of the arms that clasped her? They would despise him, insult him, condemn his father, vilify his memory,—the usurper of a home!

"Speak! speak! for God's sake, speak!" whispered Marcélite at his side. She was afraid he would change his mind.

He had dreamed and basked under the eyes of her kindred, while she had been the protégée of a negro woman! Oh, the years beyond recall!

Would they dig up his father and mother, and cast them out of the pilfered grave?

Her father and mother,—where were they buried? What would he do with himself without a home, without a plantation, without a profession, without,—yes, without a reputation?

"Speak! speak!" muttered Marcélite.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" No, they had nothing to do with it. "Mademoiselle!" He crossed the room, pushing aside those in his way; if they had been alone he would have knelt to her.

"Mademoiselle! it is all there waiting for you, ready for you,—your plantation, your servants, your home, the pictures, the books, the silver; there, just as your father left them to go to the war, just as your mother left them to fly to her death. Let me make restitution, let me make atonement; but oh, let me implore for the dead,—my father!" He looked so tall in the midst of them; in his emotion, his stiff, awkward language, so boyish! His ingenuous eyes were fixed on her face in simple, earnest, humble devotion, as many an evening he had fixed them on the portraits at home.

With swift, sure impulse, the quadroon woman put herself before him, took the words from his mouth, crazy as she was at the moment.

"It was my fault, Monsieur!" to Monsieur Goupilleau. "He did not know it! His father did not know it! I swear that old Monsieur Frank did not know it! I sent word myself that the baby was dead. Old Uncle Ursin knows it's the truth; ask him. Monsieur Frank sent him to me. I made him lie. My God! I didn't know any better. I thought the Yankees would kill her too!"

Was it truth, or falsehood? There was no one to certify or convict. Old Uncle Ursin? He had been found dead in his bed before Morris Frank left the plantation.

"It is all there, and in bank," the young man continued. The bank-book was in his pocket; he got it, handed it to Monsieur Goupilleau. "You will find the amount—"

He mentioned it quite simply and naturally,—the amount which year after year had been growing in the bank, the result of many a day's hard work, the savings from a life's self-denial and parsimony. It was a fortune to astonish the little room, to strike even the women dumb. He thanked Heaven, as he mentioned it, that the spendings had been trivial.

"I never suspected it, I grew up unconscious of it. The woman, Marcélite, saw me at the ball; she told Monsieur Goupilleau. Mademoiselle, your marriage contract would have been different if—if I—"

But Monsieur Goupilleau would not allow any more explanation. It was a coup de théâtre after his own heart,—a voluntary restitution, no lawsuit, no revelations; he could not improve it with any additions, any commendations of his own, for his voice in the general hubbub deserted him, his eyes blinded his spectacles. Frenchman as he was, if he could have been granted a son then and there, it would have been the young German, the overseer's boy, he would have chosen, as he told him over and over again, or tried to tell him.

"It is she who is too good for him, now," whispered Tante Pauline to Mademoiselle Aurore.

"Hein! She is a partie, after all!" Madame Montyon felt elated, for she flattered herself that it was she who by her determination had forced the hand of Providence. "I am going to have an angel for a daughter-in-law."

"Félix! Félix!" cried Mademoiselle Aurore, clasping her hands. "What can you say now against the good God? That superb plantation in St. James!" For the plantation was known all up and down the coast, and the fame of the Frank management was a State affair.

"Bébé! Zozo! Mamzelle Marie! To go back! To see it all,—the pictures, the books, the furniture! You didn't believe me! You thought I was lying—"

"That quadroon will raise the roof off the house," said Tante Pauline; "when they begin their noise, there is no stopping them."

"Monsieur Morris,"—Marcélite threw herself before him,—"let me work for you, let me be your slave—"

"Mignonne! Mignonne!" expostulated Madame Goupilleau with Marie. "You must not cry so, even for happiness! It is true, my child, it is all true! Do you not hear Charles, Armand,—all of them? Enfin, Marcélite! control yourself; you are exciting the child with your screaming. "Non, Monsieur," to Charles, "to-day she is still mine; to-morrow I will not dispute her with you. Armand, my friend," to her husband, "send them all away, get rid of them, we must have some repose before the ceremony."

"Well, Goupilleau," said the Madame Montyon, composing her face after a pinch of snuff, "we are to have all our trouble over again!"

"Of course, Madame! of course, the young lady's interests must now be protected." He stumbled against Marcélite. "Eh! my good woman!" My good woman! He raised her from the floor and held both her hands. "It is admirable, it is sublime. Why do you weep? He could not have done it better himself,—your Monsieur Motte!"

---

 

It was not Madame Goupilleau, but Marcélite, who walked behind the bride that night to the altar, for so Marie Modeste had commanded. It was not to Madame Goupilleau, but to Marcélite, that the bride turned for her first blessing after the ceremony. It was not Madame Goupilleau, but Marcélite, who folded away the marriage garments that night. It was not from Madame Goupilleau, but from Marcélite, that Charles Montyon received his bride. It was not Madame Goupilleau, nor any other woman, but Marcélite, who in her distant, unlighted room watched the night through, shedding on the bridal wreath the tears that only mothers shed on bridal wreaths of daughters, praying the prayers that only mothers pray on the wedding nights of daughters.

Time still carries on the story, life still furnishes the incidents; there is no last chapter to the record. The intercepted inheritance has come to the rightful heir, but it has not departed from the young German. Morris Frank had claims which not he, but Monsieur Goupilleau, asserted. He is part owner of the Ste. Marie plantation, sole manager; his crops rival the celebrated ones of his father; his yield of cane leads the statistics of his State. The old house he loved is still his home,—the home too of Marie Modeste, her husband, her children, and Marcélite.

They all live well, happily, prosperously together; for in giving hearts, God assigned destinies.