So Jean and Mary were married first by Father André at the little Catholic church Jean had always attended, and then by the Rev. George W. Brown of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, to which denomination Mary belonged.
To the marriage there arose storms of protest from the relatives and friends of both Mary and Jean. He was alternately reviled and pitied for marrying an outsider, one who, though respectable and worthy, yet was not of Creole blood. “ Le pauvre Jean ,” they wailed, “grief and drink have weakened his understanding.” From Mary’s relatives, her father in particular, there came an outburst that overshadowed the protest of Jean’s friends as a tornado outsweeps the gentle breeze of a woman’s fan. Mr. Robertson rushed to New Orleans, stormed, denounced, ridiculed, pleaded, but in vain. Mary met his every mood in kind until, wise from his years of political training, he yielded, remained for the Protestant ceremony, refused to attend the Catholic one, and returned to Chicago, where he boasted to his friends of the “high Creole society” into which his Mary had married.
For a year they were happy. Mary was too clever to attempt revolutionary changes in her new milieu, even in the home where the to her slipshod methods of management irked her sorely. Towards Mimi she adopted a conciliatory policy, sensing the girl’s latent hostility to her who had taken, in physical ways at least, the place so long filled by the adored Margot.
Mary made few friends among the intimates of Jean and Mimi. They with gentle but unmistakable signs let her know that despite her marriage to Jean she yet was and would ever remain an outsider. Time