FullReads

Now the tears were in the girl’s eyes. “And could I be whiter than I am?” she asked.

“Oh, no, no! ‘Tite Poulette,” cried the other; “but if we were only real white!–both of us; so that some gentleman might come to see me and say ‘Madame John, I want your pretty little chick. She is so beautiful. I want to take her home. She is so good–I want her to be my wife.’ Oh, my child, my child, to see that I would give my life–I would give my soul! Only you should take me along to be your servant. I walked behind two young men to-night; they ware coming home from their office; presently they began to talk about you.”

‘Tite Poulette’s eyes flashed fire.

“No, my child, they spoke only the best things One laughed a little at times and kept saying ‘Beware!’ but the other–I prayed the Virgin to bless him, he spoke such kind and noble words. Such gentle pity; such a holy heart! ‘May God defend her,’ he said, cherie; he said, ‘May God defend her, for I see no help for her.’ The other one laughed and left him. He stopped in the door right across the street. Ah, my child, do you blush? Is that something to bring the rose to your cheek? Many fine gentlemen at the ball ask me often, ‘How is your daughter, Madame John?'”.

The daughter’s face was thrown into the mother’s lap, not so well satisfied, now, with God’s handiwork. Ah, how she wept! Sob, sob, sob; gasps and sighs and stifled ejaculations, her small right hand clinched and beating on her mother’s knee; and the mother weeping over her.

Kristian Koppig shut his window. Nothing but a generous heart and a Dutchman’s phlegm could have done so at that moment. And even thou, Kristian Koppig!–for the window closed very slowly.

He wrote to his mother, thus:

“In this wicked city, I see none so fair as the poor girl who lives opposite me, and who, alas! though so fair, is one of those whom the taint of caste has cursed. She lives a lonely, innocent life in the midst of corruption, like the lilies I find here in the marshew, and I have great pity for her. ‘God defend her,’ I said to-night to a fellow clerk, ‘I see no help for her.’ I know there is a natural, and I think proper, horror of mixed blood (excuse the mention, sweet mother), and I feel it, too; and yet if she were in Holland today, not one of a hundred suitors would detect the hidden blemish.”

In such strain this young man wrote on trying to demonstrate the utter impossibility of his ever loving the lovable unfortunate, until the midnight tolling of the cathedral clock sent him to bed.

About the same hour Zalli and ‘Tite Poulette were kissing good-night.

“‘Tite Poulette, I want you to promise me one thing.”

“Well, Maman?”

“If any gentleman should ever love you and ask you to marry,–not knowing, you know,–promise me you will not tell him you are not white.”

“It can never be,” said ‘Tite Poulette.

“But if it should,” said Madame John pleadingly.

“And break the law?” asked ‘Tite Poulette, impatiently.

“But the law is unjust,” said the mother.

“But it is the law!”

“But you will not, dearie, will you?”

“I would surely tell him!” said the daughter.

When Zalli, for some cause, went next morning to the window, she started.

“‘Tite Poulette!”–she called softly without moving. The daughter came. The young man, whose idea of propriety had actuated him to this display, was sitting in the dormer window, reading. Mother and daughter bent a steady gaze at each other. It meant in French, “If he saw us last night!”–

“Ah! dear,” said the mother, her face beaming with fun–

“What can it be, Maman?”

“He speaks–oh! ha, ha!–he speaks–such miserable French!”

It came to pass one morning at early dawn that Zalli and ‘Tite Poulette, going to mass, passed a cafe, just as–who should be coming out but Monsieur, the manager of the Salle de Conde. He had not yet gone to bed. Monsieur was astonished. He had a Frenchman’s eye for the beautiful, and certainly there the beautiful was. He had heard of Madame John’s daughter, and had hoped once to see her, but did not but could this be she?