 | Père Antoine's date palm |  |
Père Antoine's Date-Palm.
Near the Levee, and not far from
the old French Cathedral, in New Orleans,
stands a fine date-palm, thirty
feet in height, growing out in the open
air as sturdily as if its sinuous roots
were sucking strength from their native
earth.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit
to the United States, mentions this exotic:
“The tree is seventy or eighty
years old; for Père Antoine, a Roman
Catholic priest, who died about twenty
years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he
planted it himself, when he was young.
succeeded to this lot of ground should
forfeit it if they cut down the palm.”
Wishing to learn something of Père
Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell
made inquiries among the ancient creole
inhabitants of the faubourg. That
the old priest, in his last days, became
very much emaciated, that he walked
about the streets like a mummy, that
he gradually dried up, and finally blew
away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory
result of the tourist's investigations.
This is all that is generally told of Père
Antoine.
In the summer of 1861, while New
Orleans was yet occupied by the Rebel
forces, I met at N——, on the coast
of New England, a lady from Louisiana,
— Miss Badeau by name,—who
legend touching Père Antoine
and his wonderful date-palm. If it
should appear tame to the reader, it
will be because I have n't a black
ribbed-silk dress, and a strip of pointlace
around my throat, like Miss Badeau;
it will be because I haven't her
eyes and lips and Southern music to
tell it with.
When Père Antoine was a very
young man, he had a friend whom he
loved as he loved his life. Émile Jardin
returned his passion, and the two,
on account of their friendship, became
the marvel of the city where they
dwelt. One was never seen without
the other; for they studied, walked,
ate, and slept together.
Antoine and Émile were preparing
to enter the Church; indeed, they had
taken the preliminary steps, when a
circumstance occurred which changed
the color of their lives.
A foreign lady, from some far-off
island in the Pacific, had a few months
before moved into their neighborhood.
The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl
of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless
and unprovided for. The young
men had been kind to the woman
during her illness, and at her death—
melting with pity at the forlorn situation
of Anglice, the daughter—swore
between themselves to love and watch
over her as if she were their sister.
Now Anglice had a wild, strange
beauty that made other women seem
tame beside her; and in the course of
regarding their ward not so much like
brothers as at first.
They struggled bravely with their
destiny month after month; for the
holy orders which they were about
to assume precluded the idea of love
and marriage.
But every day taught them to be
more fond of her. Even priests are
human. So they drifted on in a dream.
The weak like to temporize. And
she? If Anglice shared their trouble,
her face told no story. It was like
the face of a saint on a cathedral
window. Once, however, as she came
suddenly upon the two men and
overheard words that seemed to burn
like fire on the lip of the speaker,
her eyes grew very luminous for an
as immobile as before in its setting
of wavy gold hair.
“Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux.”
One night Émile Jardin and Anglice
were not to be found. They had
flown,—but whither, nobody knew,
and nobody, save Antoine, cared.
It was a heavy blow to Antoine,—
for he had half made up his mind to
run away with her himself.
A strip of paper slipped from a volume
on Antoine's desk, and fluttered to
his feet.
“Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper,
piteously; “forgive us, for we love.”
Three years went by wearily enough.
Antoine had entered the Church, and
was already looked upon as a rising
heart leaden, for there was no sweetness
in life for him.
Four years had elapsed, when a letter,
covered with outlandish postmarks,
was brought to the young priest,
— a letter from Anglice. She was
dying; — would he forgive her?
Émile, the year previous, had fallen a
victim to the fever that raged on the
island; and their child, little Anglice,
was likely to follow him. In pitiful
terms she begged Antoine to take
charge of the child until she was old
enough to enter a convent. The epistle
was finished hastily by another hand,
informing Antoine of Madame Jardin's
death; it also told him that Anglice
had been placed on board a vessel
shortly to leave the island for some
Western port.
The letter, delayed by storm and
shipwreck, was hardly read and wept
over, when little Anglice arrived.
On beholding her, Antoine uttered a
cry of joy and surprise, — she was so
like the woman he had worshipped.
As a man's tears are more pathetic
than a woman's, so is his love more
intense, — not more enduring, nor half
so subtile, but intenser.
The passion that had been crowded
down in his heart broke out and lavished
its richness on this child, who
was to him, not only the Anglice of
years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin
also.
Anglice possessed the wild, strange
beauty of her mother, — the bending,
willowy form, the rich tint of skin,
the large tropical eyes, that had almost
to him.
For a month or two Anglice was
wildly unhappy in her new home.
She talked continually of the bright
country where she was born, the fruits
and flowers and blue skies, the tall,
fan-like trees, and the streams that
went murmuring through them to the
sea. Antoine could not pacify her.
By and by she ceased to weep, and
went about the cottage with a dreary,
disconsolate air that cut Antoine to the
heart. A long-tailed paroquet, which
she had brought with her in the
ship, walked solemnly behind her
from room to room, mutely pining, it
seemed, for those heavy orient airs
that used to ruffle its brilliant plumage.
Before the year ended, he noticed
cheek, that her eyes had grown languid,
and her slight figure more willowy
than ever.
A physician was consulted. He
could discover nothing wrong with the
child, except this fading and drooping.
He failed to account for that.
It was some vague disease of the mind,
he said, beyond his skill.
So Anglice faded day after day. She
seldom left the room now. At last
Antoine could not shut out the fact
that the child was passing away. He
had learned to love her so!
“Dear heart,” he said once, “what
is't that ails thee?”
“Nothing, mon père,” for so she
called him.
The winter passed, the balmy spring
revive. In her little bamboo chair, on
the porch, she swayed to and fro in the
fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undulating
motion, like a graceful tree.
At times something seemed to weigh
upon her mind. Antoine noticed it,
and waited. At length she spoke.
“Near our house,” said little Anglice,—“near
our house, on the island,
the palm-trees are waving under the
blue sky. O how beautiful! I seem
to lie beneath them all day long. I
am very, very happy. I yearned for
them so much that I grew sick,—
don't you think it was so, mon père?”
“Mon Dieu, yes!” exclaimed Antoine,
suddenly. “Let us hasten to
those pleasant islands where the palms
are waving.”
Anglice smiled.
“I am going there, mon père!”
Ay, indeed. A week from that
evening the wax candles burned at her
feet and forehead, lighting her on the
journey.
All was over. Now was Antoine's
heart empty. Death, like another
Emile, had stolen his new Anglice.
He had nothing to do but to lay the
blighted flower away.
Père Antoine made a shallow grave
in his garden, and heaped the fresh
brown mould over his idol.
In the tranquil spring evenings, the
priest was seen sitting by the mound,
his finger closed in the unread prayerbook.
The summer broke on that sunny
land; and in the cool morning twilight,
the grave. He could never be with it
enough.
One morning he observed a delicate
stem, with two curiously shaped emerald
leaves, springing up from the centre
of the mound. At first he merely
noticed it casually: but at length the
plant grew so tall, and was so strangely
unlike anything he had ever seen
before, that he examined it with care.
How straight and graceful and exquisite
it was! When it swung to and
fro with the summer wind, in the
twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if
little Anglice were standing there in
the garden!
The days stole by, and Antoine
tended the fragile shoot, wondering
what sort of blossom it would unfold,
Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed,
weather-beaten face like a sailor's,
leaned over the garden rail, and said to
him: “What a fine young date-palm
you have there, sir!”
“Mon Dieu!” cried Père Antoine,
“and is it a palm?”
“Yes, indeed,” returned the man.
“I had no idea the tree would flourish
in this climate.”
“Mon Dieu!” was all the priest
could say.
If Père Antoine loved the tree before,
he worshipped it now. He watered
it, and nurtured it, and could have
clasped it in his arms. Here were
Émile and Anglice and the child, all
in one!
The years glided away, and the date-
only one became vigorous and the
other feeble. Père Antoine had long
passed the meridian of life. The tree
was in its youth. It no longer stood in
an isolated garden; for pretentious
brick and marble houses had clustered
about Antoine's cottage. They looked
down scowling on the humble thatched
roof. The city was edging up, trying
to crowd him off his land. But he
clung to it like lichen and refused to
sell.
Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps,
and he laughed at them. Sometimes
he was hungry, and cold, and
thinly clad; but he laughed none the
less.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” said
the old priest's smile.
Père Antoine was very old now,
scarcely able to walk; but he could sit
under the pliant, caressing leaves of his
palm, loving it like an Arab; and there
he sat till the grimmest of speculators
came to him. But even in death
Père Antoine was faithful to his trust.
The owner of that land loses it, if
he harm the date-tree.
And there it stands in the narrow,
dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger,
an exquisite foreign lady whose
grace is a joy to the eye, the incense
of whose breath makes the air enamored!
May the hand wither that
touches her ungently!
“Because it grew from the heart of
little Anglice,” said Miss Badeau, tenderly.
| Père Antoine's date palm | |