his arms across a tree, and propping a sodden bundle on branches.
Neither Angélique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern
gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he
sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing
boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish
look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears.
They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care
alongside the trunk supporting him.
The colonel let them take tante-gra'mère in. He was exhausted. One arm
and his cheek sunk on the side of the boat, and they drew him across it,
steadying themselves by the foliage upreared by the tree.
He opened his eyes, and saw rose and pearl streaks in the sky. The sun
was mounting behind the bluffs. Then a canopy of leaves intervened, and
a whir of bird wings came to his ears. The boat had reached dead water,
and was moving over the submerged roadbed, and groping betwixt the stems
of great pecan-trees,--the great pecan-trees which stood sentinel on the
river borders of his estate. He noticed how the broken limbs flourished
in the water, every leaf satisfied with the moisture it drew.
The colonel realized that he was lying flat in a boat which had not been
bailed dry, and that his head rested on wet homespun, by its odor
belonging to Louis or Jacques; and he saw their black naked arms
paddling with the oars. Beyond them he saw Wachique holding her mistress
carefully and unrestrained; and the negro in her quailed before him at
the deed the Indian had done, scarcely comforted by the twinkle in the
colonel's eye. Tante-gra'mère was sitting up meekly, less affected by
dampness than anybody else in the boat. She had a fresh and toughened
look. Her baptism in the rivers had perhaps renewed her for another
century.
"Madame, you are certainly the most remarkable woman in this Territory.
You have borne this night marvelously well, and the accident of the boat
even better."
"Not at all, monsieur the colonel."
She spoke as children do when effectually punished for ill temper.
"Are you cold?"
"I am wet, monsieur. We are all wet. It is indeed a time of flood."
"We shall soon see a blazing fire and a hot breakfast, and all the
garments in the country will be ours without asking."
The colonel raised himself on his elbow and looked around. Angélique sat
beside his head; so close that they both blushed.
They were not wet nor chilled nor hungry. They had not looked on death
nor felt the shadow of eternity. The sweet mystery of continued life was
before them. The flood, like a sea of glass, spread itself to the
thousand footsteps of the sun.
Tante-gra'mère kept her eyes upon them. But it is not easy to hear what
people say when you are riding among treetops and bird's-nests in the
early morning.
"Mademoiselle, we are nearly home."
"Yes, monsieur."
"It has been to me a great night."
"I can understand that, monsieur."
"The children will be dancing when they see you. Odile and Pierre were
awake, and they both cried when the first boat came home last night
without you."
"Monsieur the colonel, you are too good to us."
"Angélique, do you love me?"
"It is true, monsieur."
"But it must be owned I am a dozen years older than you, and I have
loved before."
"I never have."
"Does it not seem a pity, then, that you who have had the pick of the
Territory should become the second wife of Pierre Menard?"
"I should rather be the second choice with you, monsieur, than the first
choice of any other man in the Territory."
"Mademoiselle, I adore you."
"That remains to be seen, monsieur."
"What did you think when I was under water?"
"I did not think, monsieur. I perished. It was then you conquered me."
"Good. I will take to the water whenever any little difference arises
between us. It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."
"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another
night and morning."
"Now see how it is with nature, Angélique. Life is always rising out of
death. This affair of ours,--I call it a lily growing out of the water.
Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to
its eaves in the Mississippi?"
"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes
laughed into his.
"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in
this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be
yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods,
or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a
cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not
unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is
empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the
strong-house on the hill."
Angélique's wet hair still clung to her forehead, but her warmth had
returned with a glow. The colonel was a compact man, who had passed
through water as his own element. To be dripping was no hindrance to his
courtship.
"When may we celebrate the marriage?"
"Is it a time to speak of marriage when two are lying dead in the
house?"
His countenance changed at the rebuke, and, as all fortunate people do
when they have passed the selfish fury of youth, he apologized for
success.
"It is true. And Reece Zhone was the only man in the Territory whom I
feared as a rival. As soon as he is laid low I forget him. He would not
so soon forget me. Yet I do not forget him. The whole Illinois Territory
will remember him. But Reece Zhone himself would not blame me, when I am
bringing you home to my house, for hinting that I hope to keep you
there."
"To keep me there, monsieur the colonel! No, I am not to be married in a
hurry."
"But I made my proposals months ago, Angélique. The children and I have
long had our secrets about bringing you home. Two of them sit on my knee
and two of them climb my back, and we talk it over. They will not let
you leave the house alive, mademoiselle. Father Olivier will still
celebrate the sacraments among us. Kaskaskia will have the consolations
of religion for this flood; but I may not have the consolation of
knowing my own wedding-day."
"The church is now half full of water."
"Must I first bail out the church?"
"I draw the line there, monsieur the colonel. You are a prevailing man.
You will doubtless wind me around your thumb as you do the Indians. But
when I am married, I will be married in church, and sign the register in
the old way. What, monsieur, do you think the water will never go down?"
"It will go down, yes, and the common fields will be the better for it.
But it is hard a man should have to watch a rivergauge to find out the
date of his own wedding."
"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."
"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."
"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the
colonel?"
"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be
two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate
Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."
A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.
The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats
could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three
sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water
sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their
matin service as they were rowed.
Angélique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating
into the next world,--in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,--seeing
the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.
All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the
roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless
people. At dusk, some jaded men came back--among them Captain Saucier
and Colonel Menard--from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.
At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without
waiting for a belated moon. Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff,
on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work
of the day. They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.
He was not excited by the swarming life just below him. His idea of
Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory
house, with the governor's presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones
and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it
awe. Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his
love. The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and
for him they could never be anywhere else.
Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap
off, and looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and
wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world. They heard the soft
wash of the flood. The priest bared his head to the evening air.
"My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable
to reach him."
"Yes, father."
"You have been a good son. Your conscience acquits you. And now the time
has come when you are free to go anywhere you please."
Jean looked over the flood.
"But there's no place to go to now, father. I was waiting for Kaskaskia,
and Kaskaskia is gone."
"Not gone, my son. The water will soon recede. The people will return to
their homes. Kaskaskia will be the capital of the new State yet."
"Yes, father," said Jean dejectedly. He waited until the priest
sauntered away. It was not for him to contradict a priest. But watching
humid darkness grow over the place where Kaskaskia had been, he told
himself in repeated whispers,--
"It'll never be the same again. Old Kaskaskia is gone. Just when I am
ready to go there, there is no Kaskaskia to go to."
Jean sat down, and propped his elbows on his knees and his face in his
hands, as tender a spirit as ever brooded over ruin. He thought he could
bear the bereavement better if battle and fire had swept it away; but to
see it lying drowned before him made his heart a clod.
Singly and in bunches the lantern-bearing boats came home to their
shelter in the pecan-trees, leaving the engulfed plain to starlight. No
lamp was seen, no music tinkled there; in the water streets the evening
wind made tiny tracks, and then it also deserted the town, leaving the
liquid sheet drawn and fitted smoothly to place. Nothing but water,
north, west, and south; a vast plain reflecting stars, and here and
there showing spots like burnished shields. The grotesque halves of
buildings in its foreground became as insignificant as flecks of shadow.
The sky was a clear blue dome, the vaporous folds of the Milky Way
seeming to drift across it in indistinct light.
Now, above the flowing whisper of the inland sea, Jean Lozier could hear
other sounds. Thunder began in the north, and rolled with its cloud
toward the point where Okaw and Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads
and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them
fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode. The
buffalo herds were flying before their hunters. He heard bowstrings
twang, and saw great creatures stagger and fall headlong, and lie
panting in the long grass.
Then pale blue wood smoke unfolded itself upward, and the lodges were
spread, and there was Cascasquia of the Illinois. Black gowns came down
the northern trail, and a cross was set up.
The lodges passed into wide dormered homesteads, and bowers of foliage
promised the fruits of Europe among old forest trees. Jean heard the
drum, and saw white uniforms moving back and forth, and gun barrels
glistening, and the lilies of France floating over expeditions which put
out to the south. This was Kaskaskia. The traffic of the West gathered
to it. Men and women crossed the wilderness to find the charm of life
there; the waterways and a north trail as firm as a Roman road bringing
them easily in. Neyon de Villiers lifted the hat from his fine gray head
and saluted society there; and the sulky figure of Pontiac stalked
abroad. Fort Gage, and the scarlet uniform of Great Britain, and a new
flag bearing thirteen stripes swam past Jean's eyes. The old French days
were gone, but the new American days, blending the gathered races into
one, were better still. Kaskaskia was a seat of government, a Western
republic, rich and merry and generous and eloquent, with the great river
and the world at her feet. The hum of traffic came up to Jean. He saw
the beautiful children of gently nurtured mothers; he saw the men who
moulded public opinion; he saw brawny white-clothed slaves; he saw the
crowded wharf, the bridge with long rays of motes stretching across it
from the low-lying sun.
Now it disappeared. The weird, lonesome flood spread where that city of
his desires had been.
"Kaskaskia is gone. 'But the glory remains when the light fades away.'"
End of Project Gutenberg's Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood