to his left. He knew well what comfort or misery hung on his answer, and
said with decision which no one could turn:--
"Now, messieurs, I am going to lend all my salt to these poor men who
cannot get it any other way. You fellows who have money in your pockets,
you may go to Sa' Loui', by gar, and buy yourselves some."
The peninsula of Kaskaskia was glorified by sunset, and even having its
emerald stretches purpled by the evening shadows of the hills, before
Rice Jones could go home to his sister. The hundreds thronging him all
day and hurrahing at his merciless wit saw none of his trouble in his
face.
He had sat by Maria day after day, wiping the cold dampness from her
forehead and watching her self-restraining pride. They did not talk
much, and when they spoke it was to make amusement for each other. This
young sister growing up over the sea had been a precious image to his
early manhood. But it was easier to see her die now that the cause of
Dr. Dunlap's enmity was growing distinct to him.
"No wonder he wanted me shot," thought Rice. "No wonder he took all her
family as his natural foes at sight."
Sometimes the lawyer dropped his papers and walked his office,
determining to go out and shoot Dr. Dunlap. The most judicial mind has
its revolts against concise statement. In these boiling moods Rice did
not want evidence; he knew enough. But cooler counsel checked him. There
were plenty of grounds and plenty of days yet to come for a political
duel, in which no names and no family honor need be mixed.
Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice
behind him. It was only young Pierre Menard at his father's gate. The
veins on the child's temples were distended by their embarrassed
throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.
"I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone," stammered Pierre,
looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should
appear before he had his say.
"What is it, colonel junior?" said Rice, returning to the gate.
"I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family."
"I hope you haven't any disagreement in your family that the law will
have to settle?"
"Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel much. And we never should quarrel
at all if we had a mother to teach us better," said young Pierre
adroitly.
Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him
struggle unhelped to his object.
"Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?"
"Certainly," replied the prompt lawyer.
"But why should you want to get married? You have no children."
"I might have some, if I were married," argued Rice.
"But unless you get some you don't need any mother for them. On the
contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family."
"I see. You came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a
stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you
and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?"
The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on
Rice's face.
"You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it,
monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her. The girls--all of us,
in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her."
"You are quite right. I don't know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia
than Miss Peggy Morrison."
"But she isn't the one, Monsieur Zhone. Oh, she wouldn't do at all."
"She wouldn't? I have made a mistake. It's Mademoiselle Vigo."
"Oh, no, she wouldn't do, either. There is only one that would do." The
boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation. "It is Mademoiselle
Angélique Saucier, monsieur."
Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.
"That's why I came to you about it, monsieur. In the first place, Odile
picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her
because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the
room where she is."
"Young man, this cannot be," said Rice Jones.
"Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur? If you haven't, please don't.
Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison
that you think is such a fine young woman."
Rice laughed.
"You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle
Saucier, my lad."
"But you are the worst one," said Pierre eagerly. "Odile thinks if you
let her alone we may get her."
"But I can't let her alone. I see the force of your claims, but human
nature is so perverse, Pierre, that I want her worse than ever."
Pierre dug with his heel in the grass. His determined countenance
delighted the rival.
"Monsieur, if you do get her, you have our whole family to beat."
"Yes, I see what odds there are against me," owned Rice.
"We are going to marry her if we can--and my father is willing. He is
nearly always willing to please us."
"This is fair and open," pronounced Rice, "and the way for gentlemen to
treat each other. You have done the right thing in coming to talk this
matter over with me."
"I'm not sure of that, m'sieur."
"I am, for there is nothing better than fair and open rivalry. And after
all, nobody can settle this but Mademoiselle Saucier herself. She may
not be willing to take any of us. But, whatever the result, shake hands,
Pierre."
The boy transferred his riding-whip, and met the lawyer's palm with a
hearty grasp. They shook hands, laughing, and Pierre felt surprised to
find how well he liked Rice Jones.
As the wide and capacious Kaskaskia houses were but a single story high,
Maria's bedroom was almost in the garden. Sweet-brier stretched above
the foundation and climbed her window; and there were rank flowers,
such as marigolds and peppery bouncing-betties, which sent her pungent
odors. Sometimes she could see her stepmother walking the graveled paths
between the vegetable beds, or her father and Rice strolling back and
forth together of an evening. Each one was certain to bring her
something,--a long-stemmed pink, or phlox in a bunch, like a handful of
honeycomb. The gardener pulled out dead vines and stalks and burned them
behind a screen of bushes, the thin blue smoke trailing low.
Her father would leave his office to sit beside her, holding the hand
which grew thinner every day. He had looked forward to his daughter's
coming as a blossoming-time in his life. Maria had not left her bed
since the night of her hemorrhage. A mere fortnight in the Territory
seemed to have wasted half her little body.
When you have strained to bear your burden and keep up with the world's
march, lightly commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in
finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often
fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The
visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the
unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out
and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going
to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so
keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay your head in his
lap.
There are natures to whom suffering is degradation. Sympathy would burn
them like caustic. They are dumb on the side which seeks promiscuous
fellowship. They love one person, and live or die by that love.
"I have borne it by myself so far," Maria would think; "I can bear it by
myself the rest of the way."
Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing:
"Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come
near to see me die! And I love you,--I love you so in spite of
everything."
Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story. He would
perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did. Yet, on the
contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him
directly out to kill the man she loved. And again she would burn with
rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap's condescension to a legal marriage. He was
willing.
"You are not willing," she would whisper fiercely at the night candle.
"You do not love me any more."
The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for
hours, living over their stolen life together. And she puzzled herself
trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why
all these things should happen. The mystery to come is not greater than
the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the
many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by
his name.
At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in
a spark: the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a
continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best
prayer of thanks to Almighty God.
Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Angélique came in at
twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home.
The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes,
while Angélique sat down and held Maria's hand. Perhaps invisible
streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl. She smiled
with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval
face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.
Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.
Angélique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first
notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was
spared the effort of talking or listening. It was a fixed look of
penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and
making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She
merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick
had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through
the hearts of men.
The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of
education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an
appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular
little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather
than its people; so that after Angélique went away Maria often fell
asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or
under the cool shadows of rocks.
As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Angélique with
young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that
her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and
Rice directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how
Maria had borne the noise of the day.
"She is very quiet," said Angélique. "She was indeed falling asleep when
I came out."
"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."
There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of
departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the
songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom
all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which
divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Angélique upon
her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the
secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just
reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had
taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for
herself, reaching in deftly with mitted arms, holding her gown between
her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses,
with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centres. There was a
bouquet of garden-breaths from gray-green sage and rosemary leaves and
the countless herbs and vegetables which every slaveholding Kaskaskian
cultivated for his large household. Pink and red hollyhocks stood
sentinel along the paths. The slave cabins, the loom-house, the kitchen,
and a row of straw beehives were ranged at the back of the lawn, edging
the garden.
Angélique came back to the main walk, picking her way with slipper toes,
and offered part of her spoil to Rice. He took some roses, and held the
hand which gave them. She had come in his way too soon after his mocking
little talk with young Pierre Menard. He was occupied with other things,
but that had made him feel a sudden need.
Angélique blushed in the dense twilight, her face taking childlike lines
of apprehension. Her heart sank, and she suffered for him vicariously
in advance. Her sensibility to other presences was so keen that she had
once made it a subject of confession. "Father, I cannot feel any
separateness from the people around me. Is this a sin?" "Believe that
you have the saints and holy angels also in your company, and it will be
no sin," answered Father Olivier.
Though she was used to these queer demonstrations of men, her conscience
always rebuked her for the number of offers she received. No sooner did
she feel on terms of excellent friendliness with any man than he began
to fondle her hand and announce himself her lover. It must be as her
tante-gra'mère said, that girls had too much liberty in the Territory.
Jules Vigo and Billy Edgar had both proposed in one day, and Angélique
hid herself in the loom-house, feeling peculiarly humbled and ashamed to
face the family, until her godmother had her almost forcibly brought
back to the usual post.
"I love you," said Rice Jones.
"But please, no, Monsieur Zhone, no."
"I love you," he repeated, compressing his lips. "Why 'no, Monsieur
Zhone, no'?"
"I do not know." Angélique drew her hand back and arranged her roses
over and over, looking down at them in blind distress.
"Is it Pierre Menard?"
She glanced up at him reproachfully.
"Oh, monsieur, it is only that I do not want"--She put silence in the
place of words. "Monsieur," she then appealed, "why do men ask girls who
do not want them to? If one appeared anxious, then it would be
reasonable."
"Not to men," said Rice, smiling. "We will have what is hard to be got.
I shall have you, my Angélique. I will wait."
"Monsieur," said Angélique, thinking of an obstacle which might block
his way, "I am a Catholic, and you are not."
"Priests don't frighten me. And Father Olivier is too sensible an old
fellow to object to setting you in the car of my ambition."
They stood in silence.
"Good-night, Monsieur Zhone," said Angélique. "Don't wait."
"But I shall wait," said Rice.
He had bowed and turned away to the currant hedge, and Angélique was
entering her father's lawn, when he came back impetuously. He framed her
cheeks in his hands, and she could feel rather than see the power of
possession in his eyes.
"Angélique!" he said, and the word rushed through her like flame. She
recoiled, but Rice Jones was again in his father's garden, moving like a
shadow toward the house, before she stirred. Whether it was the trick of
the orator or the irrepressible outburst of passion, that appeal
continued to ring in her ears and to thrill.
More disturbed than she had ever been before by the tactics of a lover,
Angélique hurried up the back gallery steps, to find Peggy Morrison
sitting in her chamber window, cross-legged, leaning over with one palm
supporting a pointed chin. The swinging sashes were pushed outward, and
Peggy's white gown hung down from the broad sill.
"Is that you, Peggy?" said Angélique. "I thought you were dancing at
Vigo's this evening."
"I thought you were, too."
"Mama felt obliged to send our excuses, on account of going to sister's
baby."
"How beautiful these large French families are!" observed Peggy; "some
of them are always dying or teething, and the girls are slaves to their
elders."
"We must be beautiful," said Angélique, "since two of the Morrisons have
picked wives from us; and I assure you the Morrison babies give us the
most trouble."
"You might expect that. I never saw any luck go with a red-headed
Morrison."
Angélique sat down on the sill, also, leaning against the side of the
window. The garden was becoming a void of dimness, through which a few
fireflies sowed themselves. Vapor blotted such stars as they might have
seen from their perch, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred with a
whisper of wind.
"I am so glad you came to stay with me, Peggy. But you are dressed; why
did you not go?"
"I am hiding."
"What are you hiding from?"
"Jules Vigo, of course."
"Poor Jules."
"Yes, you are always saying poor this and that, after you set them on by
rejecting them. They run about like blind, mad oxen till they bump their
stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if
I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of
yours."
"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said
Angélique genuinely.
"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms,
and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense
at all."
Angélique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,--
"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"
"Oh, Jules!--he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid
of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth
one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot
again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying
some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I
have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."
Angélique laughed.
"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your
being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the
foolishness of falling in love."
"Angélique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"
"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as
we are."
Peggy glanced at her through the dark.
"Do you intend to be a nun?"
"No, I have no vocation."
"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an
old maid."
"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good
women."
"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said
Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these
simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of
them, Angélique?"
Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and
they revealed it as she asked this question.
"No, I think not," answered Angélique.
"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and
recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked
Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Angélique's arm. "What was
the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"
The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.
"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.
"Did you see him?"
"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses,
for all the world like catching a pony with a bunch of grass. And I saw
him careering back to neigh in your face."
"Oh, Peggy, I wish Monsieur Reece Zhone could but hear what you say. Do
teach me some of your clever ridicule. It must be that I take suitors
too seriously."
"Thank you," said Peggy dryly, "I need it all for my second-hand lot. He
is the worst fool of any of them."
"Take care, Peggy, you rouse me. Why is a man a fool for loving me?"
"He said he loved you, then?"
The Saucier negroes were gathering on doorsteps, excited by the day and
the bustle of crowds which still hummed in the streets. Now a line of
song was roared from the farthest cabin, and old and young voices all
poured themselves into a chorus. A slender young moon showed itself
under foliage, dipping almost as low as the horizon. Under all other
sounds of life, but steadily and with sweet monotony, the world of
little living things in grass and thicket made itself heard. The dewy
darkness was a pleasure to Angélique, but Peggy moved restlessly, and
finally clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned against the window
side, watching as well as she could the queen of hearts opposite. She
could herself feel Angélique's charm of beautiful health and outreaching
sympathy. Peggy was a candid girl, and had no self-deceptions. But she
did have that foreknowledge of herself which lives a germ in some
unformed girls whose development surprises everybody. She knew she could
become a woman of strength and influence, the best wife in the Territory
for an ambitious man who had the wisdom to choose her. Her sharp
fairness would round out, moreover, and her red head, melting the snows
which fell in middle age on a Morrison, become a softly golden and
glorious crown. At an age when Angélique would be faded, Peggy's richest
bloom would appear. She was like the wild grapes under the bluffs; it
required frost to ripen her. But women whom nature thus obliges to wait
for beauty seldom do it graciously; transition is not repose.
"Well, which is it to be, Rice Jones or Pierre Menard? Be candid with
me, Angélique, as I would be with you. You know you will have to decide
some time."
"I do not think Monsieur Reece Zhone is for me," said Angélique, with
intuitive avoidance of Colonel Menard's name; Peggy cared nothing for
the fate of Colonel Menard. "Indeed, I believe his mind dwells more on
his sister now than on any one else."
"I hate people's relations!" cried Peggy brutally; "especially their
sick relations. I couldn't run every evening to pet Maria Jones and feed
her pap."
"I do not pet her nor feed her pap," declared Angélique, put on the
defensive. "Don't be a little beast, Peggy," she added in French.
"I see how it is: you are going to take him. The man who needs a bug in
his ear worse than any other man in the Territory will never be handed
over to me to get it. But let me tell you, you will have your hands full
with Rice Jones. This Welsh-English stock is not soft stuff to manage.
When he makes that line with his lips that looks like a red-hot razor
edge, his poor wife will wish to leave this earth and take to the
bluffs."
"You appear to think a great deal about Monsieur Reece Zhone and his
future wife," said Angélique mischievously.
"I know what you mean," said Peggy defiantly, "and we may as well have
it out now as any time. If you throw him at me, I shall quarrel with
you. I detest Rice Jones. He makes me crosser than any other person in
the world."
"How can you detest a man like that? I am almost afraid of him. He has
a wonderful force. It is a great thing at his age to be elected to the
National Assembly as the leader of his party in the Territory."
"I am not afraid of him," said Peggy, with a note of pride.
"No,--for I have sometimes thought, Peggy, that Monsieur Reece Zhone and
you were made for each other."
Peggy Morrison sneered. Her nervous laughter, however, had a sound of
jubilation.
The talk stopped there. They could see fog rising like a smoke from the
earth, gradually making distant indistinct objects an obliterated
memory, and filling the place where the garden had been.
"We must go in and call for candles," said Angélique.
"No," said Peggy, turning on the broad sill and stretching herself along
it, "let me lay my head in your lap and watch that lovely mist come up
like a dream. It makes me feel happy. You are a good girl, Angélique."
PART THIRD.
THE RISING.
Father Baby's part in the common fields lay on the Mississippi side of
the peninsula, quite three miles from town. The common fields as an
entire tract belonged to the community of Kaskaskia; no individual held
any purchased or transferable right in them. Each man who wished to
could claim his proportion of acres and plant any crop he pleased, year
after year. He paid no rent, but neither did he hold any fee in the
land.
Early on rainy summer mornings, the friar loved to hoist his capote on
the cord, and tramp, bare-legged, out to his two-acre farm, leaving his
slave, with a few small coins in the till, to keep shop should any
customer forestall his return.
"The fathers of all orders," explained Father Baby, "from their
earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the
flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning,
when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send
you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above
the understanding of a black rascal like you.".