the confinement of a shop worked a kind of ferment in his wild spirit,
which violent dancing somewhat relieved, but which intimate contact with
the earth cooled and settled. Father Baby sometimes stripped off his
capote and lay down in the hollow between furrows of corn, like a very
lean but peaceful pig. He would not have been seen, on any account, and
lifted an apprehensive head in the darkness of the morning if a bird
rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame;
but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his
thin visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face
of a child making mud pies.
It had rained steadily since the political field day which had drawn
such crowds to Kaskaskia. The waters of the Okaw had risen, and Father
Baby's way to his work had been across fields of puddles, through which
he waded before dawn; knowing well that a week's growth of weeds was
waiting for him in its rankness.
The rain was not over. It barely yet restrained itself, and threatened
without falling; blotting out distance as the light grew. A damp air
blew from the northwest. Father Baby found the little avenues between
his rows of maize and pea vines choked with the liberal growth which no
man plants, and he fell furiously to work. His greatest pleasure was the
order and thrift of his little farm, and until these were restored he
could not even wallow comfortably. When he had hoed and pulled out
stubborn roots until his back ached, he stood erect, letting his hands
hang outspread, magnified by their mask of dirt, and rested himself,
thinking of the winter dinners he would enjoy when this moist land
should take on a silver coating of frost, and a frozen sward resist the
tread of his wooden shoe.
"O Lord," said Father Baby, "I confess I am a sinner; we all are. But I
am a provident sinner who makes good use of the increase Thou dost send
through the earth. I do Thee to wit that Antoine Lamarche's crop is
pretty weedy. The lazy dog will have to buy of me, and if I do not skin
him well--But hold on. My blessed Master, I had forgot that Antoine has
a sick child in his house. I will set his garden in order for him.
Perhaps Thou wilt count it to me for righteousness, and let it offset
some of my iniquities."
So when he had finished his own, the friar put his hoe into his
neighbor's patch, and worked until the sweat rolled down his thin
cheeks. Gusts of rain added their moisture. As much light as the world
was to have that day filtered through sheets of vapor. The bluffs
bordering the Okaw could not be seen except as a vague bank of forest;
and as for the lowlands across the great river, they might as well have
had no existence.
It grew upon Father Baby's observation that the Mississippi had never
looked so threatening. He stuck to his hoeing until he was nearly
exhausted, and Antoine Lamarche's ground showed at least enough
improvement to offset all the cheating he had done that week, and then
made his way among bushes to the verge of the bank. The strong current
always bearing down from the northwest against the peninsula had
increased its velocity to a dizzy sweep. It bit out pieces of the shore
as large as Father Baby's shop, and far and near these were seen falling
in with splashes like the spouting of whales.
"At this rate," said Father Baby aloud, "I shall have no part left in
the common fields by next year."
The river's tremendous rolling roar was also swollen to unusual
magnitude. He looked afar over a tawny surface at undermined stumps and
trees racing past one another. The June rise, which the melting of snows
in those vague regions around its head-waters was called, had been
considerable, but nothing to terrify the Kaskaskians. One week's rain
and the drainage of the bottom lands could scarcely have raised the
river to such a height. "Though Heaven alone can tell," grumbled the
friar, "what the Mississippi will do for its own amusement. All the able
slaves in Kaskaskia should be set to work on the levee before this day
is an hour older."
Carrying the hoe on his shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood
of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a
driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an
unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on
a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile
across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore
even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to discern a number of figures
at work carting earth to the most exposed and sunken spots of this dike.
The marsh inside the embankment was now a little lake, and some shouting
black boys were paddling about there in a canoe which had probably been
made during the leisure enforced by wet weather. It was a rough and
clumsy thing, but very strongly put together.
The tavern in Kaskaskia was a common meeting-place. Other guest houses,
scattered through the town, fed and lodged the humble in an humble way;
but none of them dared to take the name "tavern," or even to imitate its
glories. In pleasant weather, its gallery was filled with men
bargaining, or hiring the labor of other men. It was the gathering and
distributing point of news, the headquarters of the Assembly when that
body was in session,--a little hôtel de ville, in fact, where municipal
business was transacted.
The wainscoted dining-room, which had a ceiling traversed by oak beams,
had been the scene of many a stately banquet. In front of this was the
bar-room, thirty by forty feet in dimensions, with a great stone
fireplace built at one end. There was a high carved mantel over this,
displaying the solid silver candlesticks of the house, and the silver
snuffers on their tray embossed with dragons. The bar was at the end of
the room opposite the fireplace, and behind it shone the grandest of
negro men in white linen, and behind him, tier on tier, an array of
flasks and flat bottles nearly reaching the low ceiling. Poor
Kaskaskians who entered there, entered society. They always pulled their
cappos off their heads, and said "Good-evening, messieurs," to the
company in general. It was often as good as a feast to smell the spicy
odors stealing out from the dining-room. It was a gentle community, and
the tavern bar-room was by no means a resort of noisy drinkers. If any
indecorum threatened, the host was able to quell it. He sat in his own
leather chair, at the hearth corner in winter, and on the gallery in
summer; a gigantic Frenchman, full of accumulated happiness.
It was barely dusk when candles were lighted in the sconces around the
walls, and on the mantel and bar. The host had his chair by a crackling
fire, for continual dampness made the July night raw; and the crane was
swung over the blaze with a steaming tea-kettle on one of its hooks.
Several Indians also sat by the stone flags, opposite the host, moving
nothing but their small restless eyes; aboriginal America watching
transplanted Europe, and detecting the incompatible qualities of French
and English blood.
The bar-room had its orchestra of three banjos, making it a hall of
music every night in the year. And herein Africa added itself to the
civilization of the New World. Three coal-black slaves of the host's sat
on a bench sacred to them, and softly twanged their instruments,
breaking out at intervals into the wild chants of their people;
improvising, and stimulating each other by musical hints and
exclamations. It was evident that they esteemed their office; and the
male public of Kaskaskia showed them consideration. While the volume of
talk was never lessened during their glees, the talkers all listened
with at least one ear. There was no loud brawling, and the laughter
raised by argument rarely drowned the banjos. Sometimes a Frenchman was
inspired to cut a pigeon wing; and Father Baby had tripped it over every
inch of this oak floor, when the frenzy for dancing seized him and the
tunes were particularly irresistible. The bar-room gave him his only
taste of Kaskaskia society, and he took it with zest. Little wizened
black-eyed fellows clapped their hands, delighting, while their priest
was not by, in the antics of a disreputable churchman; but the bigger
and colder race paid little attention to him.
Various as were the home backgrounds of the lives converging at the
tavern, there were but two topics before that little public while the
cosy fire roared and the banjos rattled. A rumor of coming high water
was running down the Mississippi valley like the wind which is driven
before a rush of rain; and the non-separation party had suffered some
local defeat in the Indiana Territory. The first item of news took
greatest hold on those serious Anglo-Americans who had come from the
Atlantic coast to found estates in this valley. On the contrary, the
peasant tenant gave his mind to politics. It was still an intoxicating
privilege for him to have a say in the government.
"Dese Indiana Territory fellers," piped a grasshopper of a Frenchman,
springing from his chair in excitement, "dey want our slaves, dey want
our Territory,--dey want de hide off our backs."
"Tony Lamarche," drawled a Virginian, "you don't know what you're
talking about. You haven't e'er a slave to your name; and you don't own
a foot of the Territory. As for your hide, it wouldn't make a drumhead
nohow. So what are you dancin' about?"
"If I got no land, I got some of dose rights of a citizen, eh?" snorted
Antoine, planting himself in front of the Virginian, and bending forward
until they almost touched noses.
"I reckon you have, and I reckon you better use them. You git your
family over on to the bluff before your house is sucked into the Okaw."
"And go and hoe the weeds out of your maize patch, Antoine," exhorted
Father Baby, setting an empty glass back on the bar. "I cleaned part of
them out for you myself, with the rain streaming down my back, thinking
only of your breadless children. And what do I find when I come home to
my shop but that Antoine Lamarche has been in and carried off six
dog-leg twists of tobacco on credit! I say nothing about it. I am a
childless old friar; but I have never seen children eat tobacco."
The baited Frenchman turned on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl,
the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up
the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the
ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak
boards,--these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was
perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man.
He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the
dead. The friar's first thought was:--
"That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been
rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a
family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing
down and worshiping another human being,--crazy if you don't get
her, and crazed by her if you do,--I'll have none of it."
Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room.
What he said no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world,
submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices.
Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.
Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather
slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there
was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a
blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of
the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid
Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the
heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept
across the world and filled it. The boy found himself sitting on the
ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray
which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and
he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He
lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing was gone,--the
incredible Thing, in which no one believes except him who has seen it,
and which no name can name; that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in
the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or
cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is
slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos
as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because it was drowning.
The blind downpour being gone, though rain still fell and the wind
whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer
the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially
blotted; and lightning, by its swift unrollings, showed him a town
standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water,
spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from
that valley of foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in
France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and
made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life
of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling
appeal from the convent supplemented it.
There was no need of the bells to rouse Kaskaskia; they served rather as
sounding buoys in a suddenly created waterway. Peggy Morrison had come
to stay all night with Angélique Saucier. The two girls were shut in
their bedroom, and Angélique's black maid was taking the pins from
Peggy's hair, when the stone house received its shock, and shuddered
like a ship. Screams were heard from the cabins. Angélique threw the
sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the lightning
showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden
fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's
slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix
their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.
Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery.
Angélique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried
to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a
helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the
lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of
light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held
high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on
old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts.
The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks
rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling
creatures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The
shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads,
and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all
the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.
The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was
time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that
of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to
stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the
bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of
furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver,
and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up
the attic stairs. Angélique's harp went up between two stout fellows,
tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps.
Tante-gra'mère's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred
before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from
their beds by the nurse, and carried to beds made for them in the
attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and
fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of
such novel times.
The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which
another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and
the disused cradle and still-crib was now piled the salvage of a wealthy
household. Two dormer windows pierced the roof fronting the street, and
there was also one in the west gable, extending like a hallway toward
the treetops, but none in the roof at the back.
The timbers of the house creaked, and at every blow of the water the
inmates could hear it splashing to the chimneys on one side, and running
down on the other.
"Now," said Captain Saucier desperately, "tante-gra'mère must be roused
and carried up."
"Yes, the feather beds are all piled together for her, with fresh linen
sheets and all her cushions; but," gasped madame his wife, "she has
never before been waked in the night. Is it not better to send Angélique
to bring her by degrees into a frame of mind for being removed?"
"There is no time. I have left her till the last minute, hoping she
might wake."
They made a procession into her chamber, Angélique and Peggy carrying
candles, the grand-nephew and grand-niece ready for a conflict. Waters
booming against the house, and already making river coves of familiar
rooms, were scarcely more to be dreaded than the obstinate will of a
creature as small as a child.
Angélique lifted a ruffle of tante-gra'mère's nightcap and whispered in
her ear. She stirred, and struck out with one hand, encountering the
candle flame. That brought her upright, staring with indignant black
eyes at the conclave.
"Dear tante-gra'mère, we are in danger. There is a great overflow of the
rivers."
The autocrat felt for her whip in its accustomed place, and armed
herself with it.
"Pardon us for disturbing you, tante-gra'mère," said her grand-nephew,
"but I am obliged to carry you into the attic."
"Is the sun up?" cried the little voice.
"The water is, madame," answered Peggy.
"If you wait for the sun, tante-gra'mère," urged her grand-nephew's
wife, "you will drown here."
"Do you tell me I will drown in my own bed? I will not drown. Where is
Wachique?"
"She is carrying your chairs into the attic, tante-gra'mère."
"My chairs gone to the attic in my lifetime? And who has claimed my
dower chest and my linen?"
"All your things are safely removed except this bedstead, madame,"
declared Angélique's mother. "They were set down more carefully than my
china."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Only a few hours, tante-gra'mère. It is early in the night."
Her withered face was quite wrathful.
"The water is all over the floor, madame. We are standing to our ankles.
In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees. Look at it. Do you
hear the roaring and the wash outside? Kaskaskia is under water, and the
people have to climb to the roofs."
The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy. She now craned
over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like
quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.
"Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here
to break my rest?" she inquired.
Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again,
holding the whip bolt upright.
"If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me."
"There is not time to move it."
"And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your
cushions."
"My bed goes with me," repeated tante-gra'mère.
"There will soon be water enough to carry it," remarked Peggy, "if it
will float."
Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'mère's closed
shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm
devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a
crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it. The majesty of the
terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks
and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long. Again came the crash
of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew
in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.
The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as
the water struck. Angélique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led
that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and
splashes, and Captain Saucier waded after them. So the last vestige of
human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and
ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.
The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in
their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the
attic. So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea. All the
windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest
crevices. There were two rooms in the attic. In the first one the slaves
huddled among piles of furniture. The west room held the children's
pallets and tante-gra'mère's lowly substitute for her leviathan bed. She
sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully. Angélique at once had a pair
of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across
the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra'mère as promptly had them
rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation. In chaotic anger and
terror she snapped her whip at intervals.
"What is it, dear tante-gra'mère?" Angélique would inquire.
"Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead."
"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Wachique would drown. The water is already
half way up the attic stairs."
"Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?"
"Dear, there are six feather beds under you."
"How long is this to last?"
"Not long, I hope."
Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night. To
her the peninsula seemed sinking. She could not see anything distinctly.
Foam specked the panes. The bells kept up their alarm. Father Olivier
was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer,
and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness
which was the rule of their lives. Peggy tried to see even the roof of
her home. She was a grateful daughter; but her most anxious thoughts
were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be
of her.
When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no
longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the
southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface. A little
moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices. Angélique was bathing
her mother's face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted
comfortably, when nothing else could be done. Something bumped against
the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a
voice hailed them.
"That is Colonel Menard!" cried Angélique.
Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of
it. Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel
Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves. A
lantern was fastened in the prow.
"How do you make a landing at this port?"
"The saints know, colonel. But we will land you. How dared you venture
out in the trail of such a storm?"
"I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier. Besides, I am a good
swimmer. Are you all safe?"
"Safe, thank Heaven," called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of
such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband. "But
here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost
without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?"
"On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could.
But we shall be stove in here. Monsieur the captain, can you let the
family down the roof to me?"
Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done
quickly. By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into
their clothing, and Wachique brought a wrap of fur and wool for
tante-gra'mère. Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a
rope around their master's waist, by which they could hold and guide him
in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.
"How many can you carry?" he inquired.