The choking smell of gunpowder spread from room to room. Two of the
slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do
nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving
himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that
hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human
action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed
and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had
been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of
his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for
strong domestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the
loneliness of evil.
A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse
to see Angélique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly
silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to
approach,--these were the conditions which put him in the way of his
crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Angélique was
robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones.
The aged woman had gone into her shell of sleep, and the muffled shot,
the confusion and wailing, did not wake her. Wachique and another slave
lifted the body and laid it on the quickly spread couch of pillows.
Nobody thought of Maria. She lay quite still, and made no sound in that
flurry of terror.
"He is badly hurt," said Angélique. "Lizette, bring linen, the first
your hand touches; and you, Achille, open his vest and find the wound
quickly."
"But it's no use, ma'amselle," whispered Wachique, lifting her eyes.
"Do not be afraid, poor Achille. I will show you how myself. We cannot
wait for any one to help us. What would my father and Colonel Menard
say, if they found Monsieur Reece Zhone killed in our house?"
In her panic Angélique tore the vest wide, and found the great stain
over the place where the heart should be. She was kneeling, and she
turned back to Peggy, who stood behind her.
Death is great or it is a piteous change, like the slaughter of brutes,
according as we bear ourselves in its presence. How mighty an experience
it is to wait where world overlaps the edge of world, and feel the
vastness of eternity around us! A moment ago--or was it many ages?--he
spoke. Now he is gone, leaving a strange visible image lying there to
awe us. The dead take sudden majesty. They become as gods. We think they
hear us when we speak of them, and their good becomes sacred. A dead
face has all human faults wiped from it; and that Shape, that Presence,
whose passiveness seems infinite, how it fills the house, the town, the
whole world, while it stays!
The hardest problem we have to face here is the waste of our best
things,--of hopes, of patience, of love, of days, of agonizing labor, of
lives which promise most. Rice's astonishment at the brutal waste of
himself had already passed off his countenance. The open eyes saw
nothing, but the lips were closed in sublime peace.
"And his sister," wept Angélique. "Look at Mademoiselle Zhone, also."
The dozen negroes, old and young, led by Achille, began to sob in music
one of those sweet undertone chants for the dead which no race but
theirs can master. They sung the power of the man and the tenderness of
the young sister whose soul followed her brother's, and they called from
that ark on the waters for saints and angels to come down and bless the
beds of the two. The bells intoned with them, and a sinking wind
carried a lighter ripple against the house.
"Send them out," spoke Peggy Morrison, with an imperious sweep of the
arm; and the half-breed authoritatively hurried the other slaves back to
their doorway. The submissive race understood and obeyed, anxiously
watching Peggy as she wavered in her erectness and groped with the
fingers of both hands.
"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered
Achille.
Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a
consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she
said,--
"Go away. A Morrison never faints."
Angélique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.
"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right
have you to cry?"
"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."
"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find
another brilliant man."
"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to
deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this
flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out
Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our
eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."
Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.
Angélique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The
three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair,
and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made
suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the
western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of
furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead.
The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took
the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two
pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead
and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked
when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a
stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn
every sorrow into glory.
The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had
clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to
clamor louder over the destruction of youth.
"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I
want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When
I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'mère, and thinking so much,
long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I
could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out
what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy, I do
want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and
when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that,
and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and
we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur
Reece? Mademoiselle?"
Angélique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with
lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared
any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her
without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she
felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in
this world, and pride in her love; long years of glad living on the
verdure of earth in the light of the sun. One presence could make the
common old world celestial enough for her. She had missed her desire.
But Rice had turned his face to her as he died.
Two boats moved to the eaves and rested there, shaken only by a ripple
of the quieting water. The overflowed rivers would lie calm when the
wind allowed it, excepting where a boiling current drove. The dazed
girls yet seemed to dream through the strong indignation and the inquiry
and fruitless plans of arriving men. It was a dream when Captain Saucier
sat down and stared haggardly at the two who had perished under his
roof, and Colonel Menard stood with his hat over his face. It was a
dream when the brother and sister were lowered and placed on one pallet
in a boat. The hollow of the rafters, the walls on which one might mark
with his nail, the waiting black faces, the figures toiling down the
roof with those loads,--were any of these sights real?
"Wrap yourselves," said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Angélique. "The
other boat is quite ready for you."
"But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the
rowers?"
"I am myself going with them."
"Papa," urged Angélique, "Mademoiselle Zhone was a young girl. If I
were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my
head?"
"But you cannot go."
"No, but Peggy can."
"Peggy would rather go with you."
"I am sure she will do it."
"Will you, Peggy?"
"Yes, I will."
So Angélique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the
window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.
"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Angélique; for the other seemed
starting on the main journey of her life.
"Good-by, dear Angélique."
Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at
Angélique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in
the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and
within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own
while the boat felt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench
over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy
sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked
with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never
claim again.
The colonel put Angélique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set
in front of her, to receive tante-gra'mère when the potentate's
chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Angélique
leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel
Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a
picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the
realities of life followed Angélique into the boat. She was worn to
exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.
There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed
without annoying tante-gra'mère, but their mothers begged to keep them
until all could go together.
"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour
or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is
safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few
people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water
rose."
Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of
the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at
the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superstition began to rise from
that spot. They no longer had Angélique among them, with her atmosphere
of invisible angels.
"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel
Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who
spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the
morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will
show you that he can stay here alone."
"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"--
"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.
Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'mère. In
emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who
caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow
under her head.
"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We
found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the
distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side
of the Okaw."
Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light
than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint
of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent
belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain.
Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background
for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing the scent of
rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind;
and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by
orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were
already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on
branch tips.
Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It
affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the
Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty
wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate
Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square
tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle
grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing
over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?
The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet
lowered all life's functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a
promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.
The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a
little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen
putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling,
each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies
escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by
the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.
"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.
In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the
shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements
closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and
greeted Angélique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got
used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in
the world. Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
for a seat in his conveyance.
Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.
The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of
sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force
was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and
in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a
figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.
The slender voice of a violin stole across the water,--an exorcism of
the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern
corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the
second floor of the tavern, where the Assembly balls were danced. A
slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be
assured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer
maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a
time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom.
The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade
trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the
instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled,
though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their
evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across
the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of
coin,--for Father Baby was his own banker,--were buried out of sight.
His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under
the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was
probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his
slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life
felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father
Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought
the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over
material loss, remembering only the joy of life.
Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her.
She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery
bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and
over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and
across that street through which the girls had scampered on their
Midsummer Night errand.
"But stop," said Colonel Menard; and he pointed out to the rowers an
obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit
College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably
having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept
into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back
through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be
passed. Pull for the old college."
The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the
girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance,
though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless
building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a
fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out
above both great entrances, making spacious jagged arches through which
larger craft than theirs could pass. Colonel Menard was quick to see
this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College
was too well built to crumble on the heads of chance passers, though
the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten
their course.
Angélique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A
warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how
Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat
cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part
of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.
The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up
and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their
faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'mère's struggling
wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having
found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of
the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It
was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a
gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.
Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones.
That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything
this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as
far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The
pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.
"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.
Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the
boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over
their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands
and choking heads.
The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against
the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and
climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden
plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them
reached down and caught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the
edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.
The shock of a cold flood around Angélique's ears sent life as vivid as
fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were
gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the
girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and
all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it
took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged.
It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all
the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard
was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once
more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the
floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water
poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped
from her ears. A slow terror which had underlain all these physical
perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her
great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at
the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes
are long to the drowning. Angélique caught her breath, saying,
"Tante-gra'mère!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had
stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes
before he dived.
The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward,
open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the
walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her
lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and
sickening sound.
"Where is he?" demanded Angélique, creeping also to her trembling knees.
"Where is monsieur the colonel?"
Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling
eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face. Not a bubble
broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.
As the driving of steel it went through Angélique that the aching and
passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man
under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for
what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a
child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day,
mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman
called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,--had owned the very
coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence
among men. She loved Colonel Menard--and he was gone.
"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angélique. "He is caught in the cellars
of this old house,--the floors are broken. We must find him. He will
never come up."
The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds,
made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they
moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the
rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of
getting the boat righted.
"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?
Oh, be quick! Turn it,--turn it over!" Angélique reached down with the
men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness
direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little
water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed
that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with
one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard
had gone down.
"Which of you will go in?"
"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.
"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.
"Then I shall have to go in myself. I cannot swim, either, and I shall
die, but I cannot help it."
The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words
returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part
the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely
visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the
building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but
dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw
herself in.
They waited until Angélique hid her face upon a bench, shivering in her
clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.
A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the collapsed figure of
the girl began to grow upon the water. More stones in the moist walls
showed glistening surfaces as the light mounted. The fact that they had
lost their master, that his household was without a head, that the
calamity of Kaskaskia involved their future, then took possession of
both poor fellows, and the great heart of Africa shook the boat with
sobs and groans and useless cries for help.
"Come out here, you black rascals!" called a voice from the log dam.