"MARCELLINE! Marcelline! viens m'aider: je souffre!"

The voice was thin and querulous, but painfully weak, and the stalwart, broad-shouldered negress to whom the cry was addressed had an anxious, startled look on her usually stolid face as she turned away from the open door and went into the sick room.

"My poor mistress," she said tenderly in French, raising in her arms as she spoke the attenuated form of the suffering woman before her and rearranging her pillows, "you feel very bad to-day: I knew you did just now when you were asleep and I heard you groaning. I wish—bon Dieu!—I wish I could do something for you."

The invalid made no reply for a minute, but gazed piteously up into the other's face. She was a woman of about fifty, who even in the last stages of emaciation and weakness showed traces of wonderful beauty. The sharp, drawn features were as clear and fine as those of a model, and even now the sweetness and brilliancy of her dark-blue eyes were little diminished. But pain of some kind and utter prostration held her in their grip, and she made several attempts to speak before she said, in a hoarse whisper, "Thou canst help me, child. Food, Marcelline! food, for the love of God!"

The negress started, knit her brows and murmured anxiously, "Oh, my dear mistress, anything but that! Think what would happen to me and my children if—if—"—she seemed almost afraid even to whisper the name, but sank her voice to the lowest tone as she continued—"if Mons. AlphÈge were to find me out. Attends!" she added aloud and coaxingly: "it will soon be time for your supper now: when the bell rings you are to have some milk, and the sun is almost down."

The sick woman groaned and lay quite still, but when, in a few minutes, a clanging plantation-bell rang the joyful announcement that the day's work was over, she grasped the milk which Marcelline brought her like one famished, and drained it without breathing. It was a short draught, after all, for the cup was only half full, but Marcelline turned away with a shiver from the imploring eyes and outstretched hands, which asked her to replenish it, and, as though unable to endure the sight of suffering which she could not alleviate, went out upon the open gallery and sat down on the steps.

The room was on the ground floor, and the house was an old-fashioned creole dwelling, long and low, with many doors and innumerable little staircases—everything in disorder and out of repair, and weeds and grass growing up to the threshold. There was a well-stocked and carefully-tended vegetable garden not a hundred yards off: the poultry-yards, dove-cotes and smoke-houses were as full as they could hold, and over yonder, just behind the tall picket fence, were corn-cribs bursting with corn and hay-lofts choked with hay. Fifty or sixty negro hovels, irregularly grouped together down by the bayou-side, and indistinctly seen in the fading twilight, contained about three hundred slaves, who, having trooped in from the field at the sound of the bell, were now eating pork and hominy as fast as they could swallow. But no one would have guessed that all this abundance was at hand, or that this was the homestead of one of the richest creole families in the State. Yet it was so. Old Madame Levassour—or Madame Hypolite, as she was invariably called—was not only the widow of a wealthy planter, but had been herself a great heiress, perhaps the greatest in the whole South, at the time of her marriage. The property had gone on appreciating, as slave property did in old times, and now that she was lying at the point of death, her two daughters, who had married brothers, and, like all true creoles, still lived at home with their mother, would soon be enormously rich. They were well off already by inheritance from their father, and each owned a valuable plantation and many slaves; but these were nothing compared to the possessions of their mother, who was an excellent business-woman, full of energy, prudence and moderation, and never weak or capricious, especially where the interests of others were concerned. She had always been a kind and indulgent mistress to her slaves, who loved her in return with passionate fidelity, and many were the sighs and tears their approaching change of owners produced among them. Her sons-in-law were educated men, of good birth and moderate fortune; but negroes are the best judges of character in the world, and there was not a trait or feeling concealed under the quiet, nonchalant exterior of Mons. Volmont Cherbuliez which they did not thoroughly understand. About his brother AlphÈge, who was a physician, there was more diversity of opinion. That he also was bad, cruel, dissipated, profoundly deceitful, there was no doubt in the minds of his future chattels, but what precise form his idiosyncrasies would take they felt to be uncertain, and gazed with terror—all the more acute for being somewhat vague—at his cold, impassive face. In the mean time, nothing could be more irreproachable than the demeanor of the two brothers. Dr. AlphÈge was known to be a man of great skill, a graduate of the medical schools of Paris and always interested in the practice of his profession. He devoted himself to his mother-in-law now with unfailing assiduity, and when her disease—which he pronounced to be a dangerous gastric affection—baffled his utmost efforts, he sent for advice and assistance even to New Orleans; which, thirty years ago in South-western Louisiana, was quite an enterprise. His fellow-physicians agreed with him in his management of the case, and the daughters and friends of Madame Hypolite, though deeply grieved by her illness, felt that nothing more could be done. As is usual in diseases of the stomach, her suffering was very great, and the most rigid care had to be exercised in the choice and administration of nourishment. On her food, said Dr. AlphÈge, he depended for the only hope of a cure: consequently, the rules which he laid down must be, and were, enforced in the most rigid manner. The penalty of transgressing his orders was always severe, but now the fiat went forth that any one of the nurses or attendants upon Madame Hypolite who should depart from his carefully-explained orders in the minutest particular should receive a punishment such as had never been administered in that household before.

One of the marked features of creole life was always the immense number of house-servants, and in a long illness such as Madame Hypolite was now experiencing many attendants and various nurses seemed a matter of course. Therefore the doctor's orders were doubly necessary, and would in all cases have been entirely correct, since the first element of good nursing is implicit obedience. Still, with all this care, she did not improve, and in the evening of which we write her two daughters, Mesdames Volmont and AlphÈge (for a creole never gets his or her last name except in legal documents), were sitting on the gallery not far from where Marcelline crouched on the steps, rocking themselves backward and forward to keep off the mosquitoes and talking over the aspect of affairs. They were both extremely pretty women, and very much alike. Euphrosyne (Madame Volmont) was a year or two the older, but still not more than twenty-two or three. She had been married at fourteen, and her oldest boy was nearly eight, but she seemed not more than sixteen now; while Clothilde (Madame AlphÈge), who, although married at the same age, was childless, looked even younger; and any stranger seeing them this evening in their soft white cambric dresses, little high-heeled red slippers and floating ribbons, would have taken them for a couple of pretty, dark-eyed, lazy school-girls enjoying their holiday.

Marcelline listened to them as they talked, at first with the same intent, peculiar expression she had worn in the sick room, but gradually her features relaxed as she heard their harmless chatter, subdued so as not to disturb the sufferer near by, but full of little childish gossip and kindly details of daily life. After talking for a few minutes about Dr. AlphÈge's last report, which was that some slight improvement was visible, Clothilde asked her sister with much interest if she had finished the novena she was making, and on being answered in the affirmative said that she would begin one herself on Monday.

"Bien!" said Euphrosyne. "If you will make a novena I will burn two more candles, and get PÈre Ramain to say three masses for my intention in honor of the Blessed Trinity."

"Say the novena with me," suggested Clothilde, fanning and rocking, and speaking less distinctly than usual because her mouth was full of candy.

"Indeed, I cannot," replied Euphrosyne: "my knees are black and blue now. I told PÈre Ramain yesterday that if he could just see them he would not make me kneel again for a week."

As she spoke a horse's step was heard on the grass, and Volmont Cherbuliez galloped lightly up over the turf. As he jumped down and threw the reins to half a dozen nearly naked little black fellows who were at his heels, his wife rose to meet him affectionately, and with her hand on his shoulder said in a low tone of genuine delight, "Cher ami, you will be so glad to hear that mamma is really better to-night!" She was not looking at him, but even in the darkness, which was now that of a starlit summer evening, Marcelline could see the slight start and change of expression with which he heard her. He said nothing, however, but kissed her hand with as much gallantry as though he was still faisant la cour to "mademoiselle," and they all passed into the dining-room together. This, as was the custom in all such houses, was also the common sitting-room of the family, or rather, when the weather was too cold to sit on the galleries and they had occasion to leave their bedrooms, it was here they met. As a rule, the women invariably occupied their sleeping apartments, and never thought of leaving them except for the open gallery or at meal-times. Here they received their friends, sewed, embroidered, gossiped and told their beads. Two large double beds were the ordinary complement of each room, and, what with large family connections and frequent visitors, it was rare indeed to find one not in use. Owing to this habit on the part of the women, and the fact that no Creole planter ever spent two consecutive minutes in his house during the daytime if he could possibly help it, the dining-room was as dreary a spot as could be imagined. A long, narrow table covered with oilcloth and surmounted by a huge punkah, a number of straight wooden chairs and a square red cupboard comprised all the furniture, the whole dimly lighted by two candles. The Cherbuliez family, however, as they sat down to supper, seemed to feel no deficiency, and ate and drank merrily, especially when Madame Volmont's three children came in and were bountifully helped to everything on the table, including ripe figs, cucumbers, melons and gumbo choux. As they were all lingering over the table and wondering why AlphÈge did not come in, he suddenly appeared, looking very pale and tired. Without stopping even to say "Good-evening," he passed directly through into the room beyond, where Madame Hypolite was lying, and was heard questioning Marcelline rapidly as to his patient's condition. When he at last sat down to his supper he looked like a man overworked bodily indeed, but with a great weight suddenly removed from his mind; and Clothilde, who was an enfant gÂtÉe to him as to others, exclaimed joyfully, "Oh, AlphÈge, maman is really better—elle va se guÉrir, elle est hors de danger, n'est ce pas?" And she came behind him and put her arms round his neck as he tried to eat, and gave him a joyful embrace.

Whatever the dark secrets of his soul might be, at which so many dimly guessed, AlphÈge Cherbuliez was invariably tender and considerate to his wife; and now, as he gently disengaged the little hands that were throttling him from his throat, he said kindly, but with a gravity which always awed and restrained her, "I think she is better, my dear, but it is impossible to predict in such cases; and all we can do is to wait and hope."

As he spoke, his brother, who had lighted a cigarette and was sitting opposite with his youngest child on his knee, looked up. The gaze of the two men met. On the bronzed cheek of Volmont came a slight flush, and his eyes had an expression for the moment of fear and appeal. But the dark, handsome face of AlphÈge maintained its cold, inscrutable composure, and the look before which his brother's slowly fell was magnetic in its steady strength.

A little later, as they smoked together on the steps their last cigar before retiring, Volmont asked in a sudden low whisper, "Did you succeed?" and AlphÈge said slowly aloud, "Yes: they will wait two weeks longer."

"Hadst thou trouble, my brother?"

The other paused a moment, and then said, "Yes: they were inclined to insist. They have been a long time out of their money, mon ami, and when this danger is over we shall do well to avoid another—with them."

"What did you promise?" asked Volmont, as if reassured by his brother's tone.

"I promised," said AlphÈge, carefully rolling the end of his cigar, but this time dropping his voice, "that in a fortnight the notes should be taken up."

It was midnight, and the house was entirely silent and dark except where one shaded candle burned in the sick room. Down at the "quarters," as the negro cabins were called, every one was literally locked in slumber, and it must have been a loud and prolonged noise which should have awakened those tired sleepers. But some one was stirring, for all that, and had the moon been shining ever so faintly it would have been a dangerous task for those two gliding, crouching figures to move across the open green beyond the stable as they were doing. But the night was safely dark: a soft gray scud from the Gulf was flying rapidly in, obscuring even the dim starlight, and no one saw them as they passed through the turngate in the fence and sat down close to the water's edge under the overhanging trunk of a huge water-oak.

"Now we are safe," said the woman, throwing back her coarse shawl; "and I tell you, Pierre, you must listen to me, and I must speak, or some day I shall just burst out and go screaming my dreadful news from one end of the parish to the other."

The speaker was Marcelline, and the man who listened to her a huge raw-boned mulatto of that square-jawed, vindictive-looking type which is the manifest offspring of foul oppression and long-continued wrong.

But he shrank appalled from the tremendous energy of the woman beside him. "Hush—sh!" he said in a warning whisper and with an apprehensive glance into the still darkness around. "Don't talk so loud, you fool! or I'll choke the d——d black blood out of you."

The woman lowered her voice, but paid no other heed to his menace as she went on in the same earnestly-excited manner. "Listen, Pierre!" she said, grasping him by the arm and speaking with an amount of decision which even he could not withstand. "Do you love la bonne maÎtresse? Do you care for her to live or die? Dis-moi, dis ce que tu veux!"

The man answered slowly, as if the words were forced from him against his will, but still with an accent of truth and a certain amount of energy: "Love her? Jesu! yes, I do love her. It seems drÔle for one of us to talk about loving these cursed whites, who treat us worse than dogs; but, for all that, I do love madame."

The woman almost shook him as she said in a whisper of concentrated fury, "Who saved your life, Pierre Lambas, when you were perishing with smallpox? Who went to New Orleans to buy your wife and children from a cruel master and bring them here to you? Who watched by Sophie when she was in convulsions?"

Her voice broke and her fingers relaxed their hold, but this time Pierre answered without hesitation: "C'Était-elle, je le sais bien—I know it well."

"Then," pursued Marcelline, "you are willing to stand by and see her slowly murdered, inch by inch, by this white-faced devil, who leans over her and professes to love her, but is killing her—killing her, Dieu des dieux!—with hunger and thirst?" Her voice shook so that she could scarcely speak as she concluded.

"How do I know," asked Pierre slowly, after a long pause, "that what you think about this may not be a mistake?" Marcelline made an impatient gesture, but he went calmly on: "They say Mons. AlphÈge is a good doctor, and that he is fond of sa belle-mÈre. How can I take a man's life on a mere suspicion?"

She almost flew at him in her frenzy, but the darkness so shielded her that he did not see the movement, which was as well. She controlled herself instantly, and only said in reply, "Thou hast not been always so careful of white life, mon ami—so unwilling to shed white blood."

"Ah, bah!" retorted he: "that was when I could not be detected, and when more than life was in question. But now to kill this man would be to suffer death myself in the next hour, and to know that my wife and children were punished as well. Besides," he continued, as if trying to reason with her, "you have told me nothing which convinces me that what you say is true."

"Listen, then," she said, raising her head, which had sunk upon her breast. "You do not believe that he is starving her to death: you think she has all the food required by one in her weak and perishing condition. You think her cries, her prayers, her agony of desire for nourishment—for nourishment!—are only the result of sickness, and that if she had it she could not eat. Bien! Every morning, when I go into her room to dress her blisters with fresh poultices, I find the old ones torn off and eaten up! Tell me, Pierre, have any of our kin, in their worst straits of hunger and suffering, done worse than that?"

She spoke in a low voice, but it was freighted with such an intensity of horror and misery that the man beside her could not speak for an instant. When he did, he said in tones of the deepest feeling, "Ma pauvre maÎtresse! ma pauvre maÎtresse!"

"Do you still refuse?" hissed Marcelline.

The answer was compassionate, but resolved: "I do, Marcelline. Not even for her sake can I risk all. You know I have nearly saved enough money to buy my freedom. Once free, I shall soon purchase Sophie and the young ones: I cannot abandon such hopes even to save her."

There was a moment's silence. "May God help me, then!" said the woman as she rose, "for I swear by the Blessed Sacrament to save her if she be still alive—to revenge her if she be dead."

Three days later a long funeral cortÉge passed from the gates of the Levassour plantation and took its way along the dusty road toward the Catholic church of the settlement, some three miles off. In and out between the massive green walls of shining Cherokee rose-vines, which formed impenetrable barriers on either side of the way, wound the long line of old-fashioned chariots with black coachmen in queer, antiquated liveries, preceded by the tawdry French hearse with its numerous gilt devices and huge nodding plumes. The pitiless sun beat down upon them, and the blinding clouds of dust rose and choked them, but the mourners, both black and white, who formed the procession—and it was closed by a throng of weeping negroes on foot—were too much interested and absorbed in their melancholy task to feel either the one or the other, for such an occasion as this had never taken place in all that quiet country-side before. Inside of that hearse, in a snow-white coffin covered with flowers and gayly decorated with cut paper, silver crosses and waxen saints, reposed the mortal remains of Madame Hypolite Levassour, who had died at midnight thirty-six hours previously; and by her side in another coffin, more hastily contrived, lay the body of her well-beloved son-in-law and physician, Docteur AlphÈge Cherbuliez, who within six hours after her death had been killed by a shot-gun in the hands of an unknown assassin. Two negro men, GÉrard GrÔl and Pierre Lambas, had been arrested on strong suspicion, and were now in close confinement awaiting the trial which both knew would be short, sharp and swift, and administered by a judge who would not wait for legal proceedings to assist or confirm his decisions. Circumstantial evidence was strong against them, and the two unfortunate wretches were not more conscious that the sun was shining in heaven, making the narrow caboose in which they had been confined an unendurable, suffocating den of heat, than they were that when the dead were buried and grief was satisfied vengeance would make sudden and terrible work with them.

When the church was reached the carriages drew up in double ranks around the broad green meadow in which it stood, and the occupants, descending, filed in motley array into the building. Just in front of the altar two tressels were prepared for the coffins, which were not brought in until the whole congregation, which filled the pews to overflowing, was seated. Then the measured tramp of men was heard, and amid general weeping and lamentation the pall-bearers entered, and the priest, advancing from the foot of the altar, sprinkled with holy water first one coffin and then the other as they were placed before him, while the choir chanted softly the "De Profundis." Everything proceeded quietly as usual through the beautiful services for the burial of the dead, and the cool, dark church, with its mingled odor of incense and flowers, became more and more quiet as the soothing influences crept over the hearts of those assembled there. Mass was over, and the priest, coming out from the chancel, knelt before the tall crucifix which stood at the foot of the coffins and began the most touching of all prayers, "Non intres in judicium," when a sudden movement was heard at the lower end of the church, a stifled cry of alarm instantly hushed, and in another moment Marcelline, who had followed the cortÉge, like the other servants, on foot, walked slowly and with a perfectly composed and steady step up the aisle, made her reverence to the Host which was concealed in the tabernacle before her, and then stood facing the priest, who without pausing finished his prayer and rose from his knees.

"What wouldst thou have, my daughter," he asked with dignity, "that thou dost disturb the holy services of the Church?"

There was a slight pause. Marcelline seemed to steady herself: then putting her hand on the coffin of AlphÈge Cherbuliez, she said in a high, monotonous voice which rang through the building and reached even the watchers on the green without, "I killed Doctor AlphÈge Cherbuliez with my own hands. No one helped me and no one saw me. You can turn Pierre Lambas and GÉrard GrÔl loose."

There was a sudden stir like the rushing of a mighty wind through the church, but the priest waved his hand and the people were still.

"What was your motive?" he asked without moving.

The woman had never turned her head, and now answered him in the same overstrained key: "He starved my mistress to death. I saw her slowly dying of hunger and thirst day after day, and I made up my mind to kill him as soon as I could get the chance. I had to wait and wait," she went on, her voice sinking a little, "till at last it was too late."

She stopped, suddenly stooped and kissed her mistress's coffin: then wheeling round and facing the congregation, who sat spellbound, she shook her clenched fist at them. "Ah!" she said, speaking in a terrible voice, "you knew, you must have known—friends and cousins and brothers, ay, daughters too—that bread—bread!—was what she wanted. Who heard her cry for food? Who heard her beg and pray and implore for one little sip of milk, one little bite of meat?" Her voice rose to a shriek as she went on, but such was the force of her passion that no effort was made to check her: "You, all of you—all heard, all saw, all knew, yet none had courage to act; and now, c'est moi! c'est moi!" striking her breast violently with both hands, "la pauvre esclave, qui l'ai vengÉe!"

She paused: there was a dead silence. Instantly a ring of men closed round her: she was swept from the church, so swiftly was she borne away, and the service proceeded.

The priest looked pale, and sent two or three messages to those without, but they were of no avail. Before he could leave the altar, which he did as hurriedly as possible, Marcelline was hanging from the limb of an oak tree within sight of the church, her last words being, "God will forgive me: I did right." But bitter were the tears PÈre Ramain shed when he found she had gone to her last account unshriven and unabsolved.

Annie Porter.