Part 5

Behind him the deep lifts up its million hands, and thunders as in acclaim.

IV.

--"Madre de Dios!--mi sueno!" screamed Carmen, abandoning her preparations for the morning meal, as Feliu, nude, like a marine god, rushed in and held out to her a dripping and gasping baby-girl,--"Mother of God! my dream!" But there was no time then to tell of dreams; the child might die. In one instant Carmen's quick, deft hands had stripped the slender little body; and while Mateo and Feliu were finding dry clothing and stimulants, and Miguel telling how it all happened--quickly, passionately, with furious gesture,--the kind and vigorous woman exerted all her skill to revive the flickering life. Soon Feliu came to aid her, while his men set to work completing the interrupted preparation of the breakfast. Flannels were heated for the friction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmen administered by the spoonful, skilfully as any physician,--until, at last, the little creature opened her eyes and began to sob. Sobbing still, she was laid in Carmen's warm feather-bed, well swathed in woollen wrappings. The immediate danger, at least, was over; and Feliu smiled with pride and pleasure.

Then Carmen first ventured to relate her dream; and his face became grave again. Husband and wife gazed a moment into each other's eyes, feeling together the same strange thrill--that mysterious faint creeping, as of a wind passing, which is the awe of the Unknowable. Then they looked at the child, lying there, pink checked with the flush of the blood returning; and such a sudden tenderness touched them as they had known long years before, while together bending above the slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita.

--"Que ojos!" murmured Feliu, as he turned away,--feigning hunger ... (He was not hungry; but his sight had grown a little dim, as with a mist.) Que ojos! They were singular eyes, large, dark, and wonderfully fringed. The child's hair was yellow--it was the flash of it that had saved her; yet her eyes and brows were beautifully black. She was comely, but with such a curious, delicate comeliness--totally unlike the robust beauty of Concha ... At intervals she would moan a little between her sobs; and at last cried out, with a thin, shrill cry: "Maman!--oh! maman!" Then Carmen lifted her from the bed to her lap, and caressed her, and rocked her gently to and fro, as she had done many a night for Concha,--murmuring,--"Yo sere tu madre, angel mio, dulzura mia;--sere tu madrecita, palomita mia!" (I will be thy mother, my angel, my sweet;--I will be thy little mother, my doveling.) And the long silk fringes of the child's eyes overlapped, shadowed her little cheeks; and she slept--just as Conchita had slept long ago,--with her head on Carmen's bosom.

Feliu re-appeared at the inner door: at a sign, he approached cautiously, without noise, and looked.

--"She can talk," whispered Carmen in Spanish: "she called her mother"--ha llamado a su madre.

--"Y Dios tambien la ha llamado," responded Feliu, with rude pathos;--"And God also called her."

--"But the Virgin sent us the child, Feliu,--sent us the child for Concha's sake."

He did not answer at once; he seemed to be thinking very deeply;--Carmen anxiously scanned his impassive face.

--"Who knows?" he answered, at last;--"who knows? Perhaps she has ceased to belong to any one else."

One after another, Feliu's luggers fluttered in,--bearing with them news of the immense calamity. And all the fishermen, in turn, looked at the child. Not one had ever seen her before.

Ten days later, a lugger full of armed men entered the bayou, and moored at Viosca's wharf. The visitors were, for the most part, country gentlemen,--residents of Franklin and neighboring towns, or planters from the Teche country,--forming one of the numerous expeditions organized for the purpose of finding the bodies of relatives or friends lost in the great hurricane, and of punishing the robbers of the dead. They had searched numberless nooks of the coast, had given sepulture to many corpses, had recovered a large amount of jewelry, and--as Feliu afterward learned,--had summarily tried and executed several of the most abandoned class of wreckers found with ill-gotten valuables in their possession, and convicted of having mutilated the drowned. But they came to Viosca's landing only to obtain information;--he was too well known and liked to be a subject for suspicion; and, moreover, he had one good friend in the crowd,--Captain Harris of New Orleans, a veteran steamboat man and a market contractor, to whom he had disposed of many a cargo of fresh pompano, sheep's-head, and Spanish-mackerel ... Harris was the first to step to land;--some ten of the party followed him. Nearly all had lost some relative or friend in the great catastrophe;--the gathering was serious, silent,--almost grim,--which formed about Feliu.

Mateo, who had come to the country while a boy, spoke English better than the rest of the cheniere people;--he acted as interpreter whenever Feliu found any difficulty in comprehending or answering questions; and he told them of the child rescued that wild morning, and of Feliu's swim. His recital evoked a murmur of interest and excitement, followed by a confusion of questions. Well, they could see for themselves, Feliu said; but he hoped they would have a little patience;--the child was still weak;--it might be dangerous to startle her. "We'll arrange it just as you like," responded the captain;--"go ahead, Feliu!" ...

All proceeded to the house, under the great trees; Feliu and Captain Harris leading the way. It was sultry and bright;--even the sea-breeze was warm; there were pleasant odors in the shade, and a soporific murmur made of leaf-speech and the hum of gnats. Only the captain entered the house with Feliu; the rest remained without--some taking seats on a rude plank bench under the oaks--others flinging themselves down upon the weeds--a few stood still, leaning upon their rifles. Then Carmen came out to them with gourds and a bucket of fresh water, which all were glad to drink.

They waited many minutes. Perhaps it was the cool peace of the place that made them all feel how hot and tired they were: conversation flagged; and the general languor finally betrayed itself in a silence so absolute that every leaf-whisper seemed to become separately audible.

It was broken at last by the guttural voice of the old captain emerging from the cottage, leading the child by the hand, and followed by Carmen and Feliu. All who had been resting rose up and looked at the child.

Standing in a lighted space, with one tiny hand enveloped by the captain's great brown fist, she looked so lovely that a general exclamation of surprise went up. Her bright hair, loose and steeped in the sun-flame, illuminated her like a halo; and her large dark eyes, gentle and melancholy as a deer's, watched the strange faces before her with shy curiosity. She wore the same dress in which Feliu had found her--a soft white fabric of muslin, with trimmings of ribbon that had once been blue; and the now discolored silken scarf, which had twice done her such brave service, was thrown over her shoulders. Carmen had washed and repaired the dress very creditably; but the tiny slim feet were bare,--the brine-soaked shoes she wore that fearful night had fallen into shreds at the first attempt to remove them.

--"Gentlemen," said Captain Harris,--"we can find no clew to the identity of this child. There is no mark upon her clothing; and she wore nothing in the shape of jewelry--except this string of coral beads. We are nearly all Americans here; and she does not speak any English ... Does any one here know anything about her?"

Carmen felt a great sinking at her heart: was her new-found darling to be taken so soon from her? But no answer came to the captain's query. No one of the expedition had ever seen that child before. The coral beads were passed from hand to hand; the scarf was minutely scrutinized without avail. Somebody asked if the child could not talk German or Italian.

--"Italiano? No!" said Feliu, shaking his head.... One of his luggermen, Gioachino Sparicio, who, though a Sicilian, could speak several Italian idioms besides his own, had already essayed.

--"She speaks something or other," answered the captain--"but no English. I couldn't make her understand me; and Feliu, who talks nearly all the infernal languages spoken down this way, says he can't make her understand him. Suppose some of you who know French talk to her a bit ... Laroussel, why don't you try?"

The young man addressed did not at first seem to notice the captain's suggestion. He was a tall, lithe fellow, with a dark, positive face: he had never removed his black gaze from the child since the moment of her appearance. Her eyes, too, seemed to be all for him--to return his scrutiny with a sort of vague pleasure, a half savage confidence ... Was it the first embryonic feeling of race-affinity quickening in the little brain?--some intuitive, inexplicable sense of kindred? She shrank from Doctor Hecker, who addressed her in German, shook her head at Lawyer Solari, who tried to make her answer in Italian; and her look always went back plaintively to the dark, sinister face of Laroussel,--Laroussel who had calmly taken a human life, a wicked human life, only the evening before.

--"Laroussel, you're the only Creole in this crowd," said the captain; "talk to her! Talk gumbo to her! ... I've no doubt this child knows German very well, and Italian too,"--he added, maliciously--"but not in the way you gentlemen pronounce it!"

Laroussel handed his rifle to a friend, crouched down before the little girl, and looked into her face, and smiled. Her great sweet orbs shone into his one moment, seriously, as if searching; and then ... she returned his smile. It seemed to touch something latent within the man, something rare; for his whole expression changed; and there was a caress in his look and voice none of the men could have believed possible--as he exclaimed:--

--"Fais moin bo, piti."

She pouted up her pretty lips and kissed his black moustache.

He spoke to her again:--