hardly be safe, in this rough water."
"Were the boats at the wharf swept away?"
"It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was. But some of the large
craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff. By daylight we shall get
some out. And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can
muster for us."
Angélique came to the dormer window and touched her father's shoulder.
"Are you all ready?" he asked.
"Tante-gra'mère will not go into the boat."
"But she must. There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard
cannot much longer hang by the eaves."
"Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the
danger below, she may allow it."
"She must go into the boat directly," said Captain Saucier; and the
negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.
Angélique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters. The
wind sung in her ears. She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and
there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try
her voice against them. His man had an oar thrust into the broken window
below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.
"Monsieur the colonel!" called Angélique; and she saw the swift removal
of his hat.
"Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?"
"Yes, monsieur. Even my father was unable to do anything for the family
until you came. But it seems when we find one relief we get another
anxiety with it."
"What other anxiety have you now?"
"I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out."
"My bel-o-ved, would you care?" said Pierre Menard, speaking English,
which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first
syllable the name he gave her.
"Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me," replied Angélique.
"Now that is worth coming here for. De northwest wind, I do not feel it
since you say that."
"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see
you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But
something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this
water."
Tante-gra'mère screamed, and Angélique disappeared from the window-sill.
It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman. The keen small shriek
was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain
Saucier was made limp by it.
"What shall I do?" he asked his family.
"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."
"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Angélique. "The wind may sink.
The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."
"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here
before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.
"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with
Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the
window into the next boat that comes along."
"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible
to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the
boat, and stay with her myself."
"Angélique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.
"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.
Captain Saucier went again to the window, his wife and daughter and
Peggy with him.
"I could not leave her," said Angélique to Peggy. They stood behind the
father and mother, who told their trouble across the sill.
"That spoiled old woman needs a good shaking," declared Peggy.
"Poor little tante-gra'mère. It is a dreadful thing, Peggy, to be a
child when you are too old for discipline."
"Give my compliments to madame, and coax her," urged Colonel Menard.
"Tell her, if she will let herself be lowered to me, I will pledge my
life for her safety."
The two children stood huddled together, waiting, large-eyed and silent,
while their elders kneeled around the immovable invalid. Peggy laughed
at the expectant attitudes of the pleaders.
"Tante-gra'mère has now quite made up her mind to go," Madame Saucier
announced over and over to her family and to Peggy, and to the slaves at
the partition door, all of whom were waiting for the rescue barred from
them by one obstinate little mummy.
But these hopeful assertions were wasted. Tante-gra'mère had made up her
mind to stay. She held to her whip, and refused to be touched. Her fixed
decree was announced to Colonel Menard. He asked for the women and
children of the family in haste. He and his man were wasting time and
strength holding the boat against the waves. It was in danger of being
swamped.
Angélique stood deferentially before her father and asked his permission
to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked
permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's
shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two
young children only. Peggy said she would not leave Angélique.
"Monsieur the colonel," spoke Angélique again into the windy darkness,
"we are not worth half the trouble you are taking for us. I wonder you
do not leave such ridiculous people to drown or get out as we can. But
my tante-gra'mère is so old; please forgive her. My mother and the
children are quite ready. I wish poor Mademoiselle Zhone were with you,
too."
"I will fetch Mademoiselle Zhone out of her house before madame and the
children get in," said Pierre Menard promptly. "As for the delay, it is
nothing, mademoiselle; we must get you all to land as we can."
"Monsieur, will it not be dangerous? I thought of her because she is so
sick. But there is foam everywhere; and the trees are in your way."
"We can find a track," answered the colonel. "Push off, boy."
The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently
a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.
Angélique went to the dormer window in the gable. As she threw the
sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra'mère sent
from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone.
Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again. He was a crestfallen man. He
had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest
member of his household.
Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the
roof.
"It is rising higher," said Peggy.
Angélique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone. Perhaps, when
the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped
house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in
the boat now.
The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and
then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by. They
called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.
The children sat down, and leaned their heads against their mother's
knee. The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of
anxiety and broken domestic habits. Captain Saucier watched for the
return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage
could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones's
voice called.
The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level
with the other windows. Captain Saucier leaned far out. The wind had
extinguished the boat's lantern. The rowers were trying to hold the boat
broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became
breakers and threatened to capsize it. All Kaskaskia men were acquainted
with water. Pierre Menard had made many a river journey. But the
Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.
"Can you take her in?" shouted Rice. "My sister thinks she cannot be got
ashore alive."
"Can you lift her to me?"
"When the next wave comes," said Rice.
He steadied himself and lifted Maria. As the swell again tossed the boat
upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could. Captain
Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic.
He laid her down on the children's bed, leaving her to Angélique, while
he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat. Rice crept over
the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister. By
lantern light he was a strong living figure. His austerely white face
was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation. His hat had blown
away. The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his
full head.
"This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles," he observed.
"Oh, Monsieur Zhone," lamented Madame Saucier, "how can you laugh? We
are all ruined."
"No, madame. There is no such word as 'ruin' in the Territory."
"And I must take my two little children, and leave Angélique here in the
midst of this water."
Rice had directly knelt down by his sister and put his hand on her
forehead. Maria was quite still, and evidently gathering her little
strength together.
"But why do you remain?" said Rice to Angélique. She was at Maria's
opposite side, and she merely indicated the presence behind the screens;
but Peggy explained aloud,--
"She can't go because tante-gra'mère won't be moved."
"Put that limb of a Morrison girl out of the house," came an unexpected
mandate from amongst the screens.
"I would gladly put her out," said Captain Saucier anxiously. "Peggy, my
child, now that Mademoiselle Zhone is with Angélique, be persuaded to go
with madame and the children."
Peggy shook her head, laughing. A keen new delight in delay and danger
made her sparkle.
"Go yourself, Captain Saucier. One gentleman is enough to take care of
us."
"I think you ought to go, Captain Saucier," said Rice. "You will be
needed. The boat may be swamped by some of those large waves. I am
ashamed of leaving my stepmother behind; but she would not leave my
father, and Maria clung to me. We dared not fill the boat too full."
Angélique ran and kissed the children before her father put them into
the boat, and offered her cheeks to her mother. Madame Saucier was a fat
woman. She clung appalled to her husband, as he let her over the
slippery roof. Two slave men braced themselves and held the ropes which
steadied him, the whites of their eyes showing. Their mistress was
landed with a plunge, but steadied on her seat by Colonel Menard.
"Oh," she cried out, "I have left the house without saying adieu to
tante-gra'mère. My mind is distracted. She will as long as she lives
remember this discourtesy."
"It could be easily remedied, madame," suggested Colonel Menard,
panting as he braced his oar, "if she would step into the boat herself,
as we all wish her to do."
"Oh, monsieur the colonel, you are the best of men. If you had only had
the training of her instead of my poor gentle Francis, she might not be
so hard to manage now."
"We must not flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Angélique must
not remain here much longer for anybody's whim."
"Do you think the water is rising?"
"It is certainly rising."
Madame Saucier uttered a shriek as a great swell rolled the boat. The
searching wind penetrated all her garments and blew back loose ends of
her hair. There was now a partially clear sky, and the moon sent forth a
little lustre as a hint of what she might do when she had entirely freed
herself from clouds.
The children were lowered, and after them their black nurse.
"There is room for at least one more!" called Pierre Menard.
Captain Saucier stood irresolute.
"Can you not trust me with these fragments of our families?" said Rice.
"Certainly, Monsieur Reece, certainly. It is not that. But you see the
water is still rising."
"I was testing the rise of the water when Colonel Menard reached us. The
wind makes it seem higher than it really is. You can go and return,
captain, while you are hesitating."
"I am torn in two," declared the Indian fighter. "It makes a child of me
to leave Angélique behind."
"Francis Saucier," came in shrill French from the screens, "get into
that boat, and leave my godchild alone."
The captain laughed. He also kissed the cheeks of tante-gra'mère's
godchild and let himself slide down the roof, and the boat was off
directly.
The slaves, before returning to their own room, again fastened the
sashes of the dormer window. The clamor of bells which seemed to pour
through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its
dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the
window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made
a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized
her she tightened it.
"She wants air," he said hastily, and Angélique again spread wide the
window in the gable, when the thin cry of her tante-gra'mère forbade it.
"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Mademoiselle Zhone must have air."
"And must she selfishly give me rheumatism in order to give herself
air?"
"But, dear tante-gra'mère"--
"Shut that window."
"I dare not, indeed."
Rice seized two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a
swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he
opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angélique, with an
amused face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked
behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the
great soft lair built up of so many beds.
"You and I are nice people, madame," said Peggy through her teeth. "We
don't care who suffers, if we are happy. We ought to have been twins;
the same little beast lives in us both."
Tante-gra'mère's eyes snapped.
"You are a limb," she responded in shrill French.
"Yes; we know each other," said Peggy.
"When you are old, there will come a little wretch to revile you."
"I don't revile you, madame. I dote on you."
"Your mother should box your ears, mademoiselle."
"It would do me no good, madame."
"I should like to try it," said tante-gra'mère, without humor.
Angélique did not hear this little quarrel. She was helping Rice with
his sister. His pockets were full of Maria's medicines. He set the
bottles out, and Angélique arranged them ready for use. They gave her a
spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again,
grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Angélique's
sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the
sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or
the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful
that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented
that look.
Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a
tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged
indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and
storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed. The
northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased
each other up the roof at her.
"The water is still rising," remarked Peggy.
"Look, Peggy," begged Angélique, "and see if Colonel Menard and my
father are coming back with the boat."
"It is too soon," said Rice.
"Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back," suggested Peggy. "It was
a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College."
"But the storm is over now. The water is not washing over the house."
"The moon shows plenty of whitecaps. It is rough."
"As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous," said Rice.
"But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying
the sacrament. He is used to the rivers."
"Hear a Protestant catering to a papist," observed Peggy. "But it is
lost on Angélique. She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard. She
accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the
rescue."
"Must I congratulate him?" Rice inquired of Angélique. "He certainly
deserves his good luck."
"Peggy has no right to announce it so!" exclaimed Angélique, feeling
invaded and despoiled of family privacy. "It is not yet called an
engagement."
Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood.
She admired him with keen appreciation. He took his disappointment as he
would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a
muscle, and complimented the giver.
Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells. Peggy
leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow
which she knew to be the bluffs. The sound bounded over the water. From
this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always
visible. She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any
of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.
The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching
the nightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed. When a
particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but
others as anxious took their places.
"Boats will be putting out from the bluffs plentifully, soon," said
Rice. "Before to-morrow sunset all Kaskaskia and its goods and chattels
will be moved to the uplands."
"I wonder what became of the poor cows," mused Angélique. "They were
turned out to the common pasture before the storm."
"Some of them were carried down by the rivers, and some swam out to the
uplands. It is a strange predicament for the capital of a great
Territory. But these rich lowlands were made by water, and if they can
survive overflow they must be profited by it."
"What effect will this have on the election?" inquired Peggy, and Rice
laughed.
"You can't put us back on our ordinary level, Miss Peggy. We are lifted
above elections for the present."
"Here is a boat!" she exclaimed, and the slaves at the other window
hailed Father Olivier as he tried to steady himself at the angle formed
by the roofs.
Angélique looked out, but Rice sat still beside his sister.
"Are you all quite safe?" shouted the priest.
"Quite, father. The slaves were brought in, and we are all in the
attic."
"Keep up your courage and your prayers. As soon as this strong wind dies
away they will put out from shore for you."
"Colonel Menard has already been here and taken part of the family."
"Has he?"
"Yes, father; though tante-gra'mère is afraid to venture yet, so we
remain with her."
They could see the priest, indistinctly, sitting in a small skiff, which
he tried to keep off the roof with a rough paddle.
"Where did you find a boat, father?"
"I think it is one the negroes had on the marsh by the levee. It lodged
in my gallery, and by the help of the saints I am trying to voyage from
house to house, as far as I can, and carry a little encouragement. I
have the parish records here with me; and if this vessel capsizes, their
loss would be worse for this parish than the loss of me."
"But, father, you are not trying to reach the land in that frail canoe?"
"Not yet, my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did
intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of
service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able
to get him there by means of this boat."
"Come up here until the wind dies down, Monsieur Olivier," urged Peggy.
"That little tub is not strong enough to carry you. I have seen it. The
slaves made it, with scarcely any tools, of some boards from the old
Jesuit College."
"The little tub has done good service to-night, mademoiselle; and I must
get as far as the tavern, at least, to carry news of their families to
men there. Antoine Lamarche's child is dead, and his family are on the
roof. I was able to minister to its parting soul; and I set the others,
for safety, astride the roof-pole, promising them heavy penance if they
moved before help came. He ought now to take this boat and go to them,
if I can put him in heart to do it."
"A Protestant hardly caters to a papist when he puts some faith in the
courage of a man like Father Olivier," said Rice to Peggy.
"Did I hint that you would cater to any one?" she responded, with a lift
of her slender chin. The wind had blown out a long tress of Peggy's
hair, which trailed to the floor. Rice seldom looked at her; but he
noticed this sweep of living redness with something like approval; in
shadow it shone softened to bronze.
"I think my father and Colonel Menard are coming back," said Angélique.
"I see a light moving out from the bluffs."
"Oh, no; they are only picking their way among trees to a landing."
"They have gone with the current and the wind," said Rice. "It will take
a longer time to make their way back against the current and the wind."
"Let us begin to bind and gag madame now, anyhow," Peggy suggested
recklessly. "It's what the colonel will do, if he is forced to it. She
will never of her own will go into the boat."
"Poor tante-gra'mère. I should have asked Father Olivier to urge her.
But this is such a time of confusion one thinks of nothing."
Angélique bent to watch Maria's stupor. Rice had put the skeleton hand
under a coverlet which was drawn to the sick girl's chin. He sat beside
her on one of the brocaded drawing-room chairs, his head resting against
the high back and his crossed feet stretched toward the window, in an
attitude of his own which expressed quiescent power. Peggy went directly
behind the screens, determined to pounce upon the woman who prolonged
their stay in a flooded house, and deal with her as there would not be
opportunity to do later. Tante-gra'mère was asleep.
Angélique sat down with Peggy on the floor, a little way from the pile
of feather beds. They were very weary. The tonic of excitement, and even
of Rice Jones's presence, failed in their effect on Peggy. It was past
midnight. The girls heard cocks crowing along the bluffs. Angélique took
the red head upon her shoulder, saying,--
"It would be better if we slept until they call, since there is nothing
else to do."
"You might coquette over Maria Jones. I won't tell."
"What a thorn you are, Peggy! If I did not know the rose that goes with
it"--Angélique did not state her alternative.
"A red rose," scoffed Peggy; and she felt herself drowsing in the mother
arms.
Rice was keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the
screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue
night sky which it shaped for him. His temples throbbed. Though the
strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of
thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy
had told him Angélique's decision against him. He felt at peace with the
world, and for the first time even with Dr. Dunlap.
"We are here such a little time," thought Rice, "and are all such poor
wretches. What does it matter, the damage we do one another in our
groping about? God forgive me! I would have killed that man, and maybe
added another pang to the suffering of this dying girl."
Maria stirred. The snoring of the sleeping negroes penetrated the
dividing wall. He thought he heard a rasping on the shingles outside
which could not be accounted for by wind or water, and rose to his feet,
that instant facing Dr. Dunlap in the window.
Dr. Dunlap had one leg across the low sill. The two men stood
breathless. Maria saw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name.
At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly
impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to
his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped
back through the window to the boat he had taken from the priest.
The screams of women and the terrified outcry of slaves filled the
attic. Rice threw his arms above his head, and sunk downward. In the
midst of the smoke Peggy knelt by him, and lifted his head and
shoulders. The night wind blew upon them, and she could discern his
dilated eyes and piteous amazement.
"Dr. Dunlap has shot me," he said to her. "I don't know why he did it."
And his face fell against her bosom as he died.
PART FOURTH.
THE FLOOD.