THE FIRST MAYOR OF VINCENNES
Governor Abbott probably never so much as heard of the dame jeanne of
French brandy sent to him by his creole friend in New Orleans. He had
been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau arrived,
having been recalled to Detroit by the British authorities; and he
never returned. Meantime the little post with its quaint cabins and its
dilapidated block-house, called Fort Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by
the river in a blissful state of helplessness from the military point
of view. There was no garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery,
abandoned and exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of
the stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by winter freezes and
summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and
inefficiency.
The inhabitants of the town, numbering about six hundred, lived very
much as pleased them, without any regular municipal government, each
family its own tribe, each man a law unto himself; yet for mutual
protection, they all kept in touch and had certain common rights which
were religiously respected and defended faithfully. A large pasturing
ground was fenced in where the goats and little black cows of the
villagers browsed as one herd, while the patches of wheat, corn and
vegetables were not inclosed at all. A few of the thriftier and more
important citizens, however, had separate estates of some magnitude,
surrounding their residences, kept up with care and, if the time and
place be taken into account, with considerable show of taste.
Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon was looked upon as the aristocrat par
excellence of Vincennes, notwithstanding the fact that his name bore no
suggestion of noble or titled ancestry. He was rich and in a measure
educated; moreover the successful man's patent of leadership, a
commanding figure and a suave manner, came always to his assistance
when a crisis presented itself. He traded shrewdly, much to his own
profit, but invariably with the excellent result that the man, white or
Indian, with whom he did business felt himself especially favored in
the transaction. By the exercise of firmness, prudence, vast
assumption, florid eloquence and a kindly liberality he had greatly
endeared himself to the people; so that in the absence of a military
commander he came naturally to be regarded as the chief of the town,
Mo'sieu' le maire.
He returned from his extended trading expedition about the middle of
July, bringing, as was his invariable rule, a gift for Alice. This time
it was a small, thin disc of white flint, with a hole in the center
through which a beaded cord of sinew was looped. The edge of the disc
was beautifully notched and the whole surface polished so that it shone
like glass, while the beads, made of very small segments of porcupine
quills, were variously dyed, making a curiously gaudy show of bright
colors.
"There now, ma cherie, is something worth fifty times its weight in
gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster
daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred
charm-string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a
pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could
not by any possibility be killed by an enemy."
Alice kissed M. Roussillon.
"It's so curious and beautiful," she said, holding it up and drawing
the variegated string through her fingers. Then, with her mischievous
laugh, she added; "and I'm glad it is so powerful against one's enemy;
I'll wear it whenever I go where Adrienne Bourcier is, see if I don't!"
"Is she your enemy? What's up between you and la petite Adrienne, eh?"
M. Roussillon lightly demanded. "You were always the best of good
friends, I thought. What's happened?"
"Oh, we are good friends," said Alice, quickly, "very good friends,
indeed; I was but chaffing."
"Good friends, but enemies; that's how it is with women. Who's the
young man that's caused the coolness? I could guess, maybe!" He laughed
and winked knowingly. "May I be so bold as to name him at a venture?"
"Yes, if you'll be sure to mention Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she
gayly answered. "Who but he could work Adrienne up into a perfect green
mist of jealousy?"
"He would need an accomplice, I should imagine; a young lady of some
beauty and a good deal of heartlessness."
"Like whom, for example?" and she tossed her bright head. "Not me, I am
sure."
"Poh! like every pretty maiden in the whole world, ma petite coquette;
they're all alike as peas, cruel as blue jays and as sweet as
apple-blossoms." He stroked her hair clumsily with his large hand, as a
heavy and roughly fond man is apt to do, adding in an almost serious
tone:
"But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish
mischief-maker, I hope."
Alice was putting her head through the string of beads and letting the
translucent white disc fall into her bosom.
"It's time to change the subject," she said; "tell me what you have
seen while away. I wish I could go far off and see things. Have you
been to Detroit, Quebec, Montreal?"
"Yes, I've been to all, a long, hard journey, but reasonably
profitable. You shall have a goodly dot when you get married, my child."
"And did you attend any parties and balls?" she inquired quickly,
ignoring his concluding remark. "Tell me about them. How do the fine
ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big combs? Do
they have long skirts and--"
"Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox!" he interrupted; "I can't
answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached with
women old and girls young; but how could I remember how they were
dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know that silk rustled
and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and mignonette and my heart
expanded and blazed while I whirled like a top with a sweet lady in my
arms."
"Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" interpolated Madame
Roussillon with emphatic disapproval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in a
lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been!"
"Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances--such fluttering
breasts, such--"
"Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in contemptuously, "it's a
piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while
gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked--I
can!" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling gait out
of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you were not clumsy
as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her shoulder.
"Parbleu! true enough, my dear," he called after her, "I should think
you could--you mind how we used trip it together. You were the
prettiest dancer them all, and the young fellows all went to the swords
about you!"
"But tell me more," Alice insisted; "I want to know about what you saw
in the great towns--in the fine houses--how the ladies looked, how they
acted--what they said--the dresses they wore--how--"
"Ciel! you will split my ears, child; can't you fill my pipe and bring
it to me with a coal on it? Then I'll try to tell you what I can," he
cried, assuming a humorously resigned air. "Perhaps if I smoke I can
remember everything."
Alice gladly ran to do what he asked. Meantime Jean was out on the
gallery blowing a flute that M. Roussillon had brought him from Quebec.
The pipe well filled and lighted apparently did have the effect to
steady and encourage M. Roussillon's memory; or if not his memory, then
his imagination, which was of that fervid and liberal sort common to
natives of the Midi, and which has been exquisitely depicted by the
late Alphonse Daudet in Tartarin and Bompard. He leaned far back in a
strong chair, with his massive legs stretched at full length, and gazed
at the roof-poles while he talked.
He sympathized fully, in his crude way, with Alice's lively curiosity,
and his affection for her made him anxious to appease her longing after
news from the great outside world. If the sheer truth must come out,
however, he knew precious little about that world, especially the
polite part of it in which thrived those femininities so dear to the
heart of an isolated and imaginative girl. Still, as he, too, lived in
Arcadia, there was no great effort involved when he undertook to blow a
dreamer's flute.
In the first place he had not been in Quebec or Montreal during his
absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and
furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other
posts; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his meridional
fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge gained at
first hand in his youthful days in France while he was a student whose
parents fondly expected him to conquer the world, came to his aid, and
besides he had saturated himself all his life with poetry and romance.
Scudery, Scarron, Prevost, Madame La Fayette and Calprenede were the
chief sources of his information touching the life and manners, morals
and gayeties of people who, as he supposed, stirred the surface of that
resplendent and far-off ocean called society. Nothing suited him better
than to smoke a pipe and talk about what he had seen and done; and the
less he had really seen and done the more he had to tell.
His broad, almost over-virile, kindly and contented face beamed with
the warmth of wholly imaginary recollections while he recounted with
minute circumstantiality to the delighted Alice his gallant adventures
in the crowded and brilliant ball-rooms of the French-Canadian towns.
The rolling burr of his bass voice, deep and resonant, gave force to
the improvised descriptions.
Madame Roussillon heard the heavy booming and presently came softly
back into the door from the kitchen to listen. She leaned against the
facing in an attitude of ponderous attention, a hand, on her bulging
hip. She could not suppress her unbounded admiration of her liege
lord's manly physique, and jealous to fierceness as she was of his
experiences so eloquently and picturesquely related, her woman's nature
took fire with enjoyment of the scenes described.
This is the mission of the poet and the romancer--to sponge out of
existence, for a time, the stiff, refractory, and unlovely realities
and give in their place a scene of ideal mobility and charm. The two
women reveled in Gaspard Roussillon's revelations. They saw the
brilliant companies, the luxurious surroundings, heard the rustle of
brocade and the fine flutter of laces, the hum of sweet voices,
breathed in the wafts of costly perfumeries, looked on while the
dancers whirled and flickered in the confusion of lights; and over all
and through all poured and vibrated such ravishing music as only the
southern imagination could have conjured up out of nothing.
Alice was absolutely charmed. She sat on a low wooden stool and gazed
into Gaspard Roussillon's face with dilating eyes in which burned that
rich and radiant something we call a passionate soul. She drank in his
flamboyant stream of words with a thirst which nothing but experience
could ever quench. He felt her silent applause and the admiring
involuntary absorption that possessed his wife; the consciousness of
his elementary magnetism augmented the flow of his fine descriptions,
and he went on and on, until the arrival of Father Beret put an end to
it all.
The priest, hearing of M. Roussillon's return, had come to inquire
about some friends living at Detroit. He took luncheon with the family,
enjoying the downright refreshing collation of broiled birds, onions,
meal-cakes and claret, ending with a dish of blackberries and cream.
M. Roussillon seized the first opportunity to resume his successful
romancing, and presently in the midst of the meal began to tell Father
Beret about what he had seen in Quebec.
"By the way," he said, with expansive casualness in his voice, "I
called upon your old-time friend and co-adjutor, Father Sebastien,
while up there. A noble old man. He sent you a thousand good messages.
Was mightily delighted when I told him how happy and hale you have
always been here. Ah, you should have seen his dear old eyes full of
loving tears. He would walk a hundred miles to see you, he said, but
never expected to in this world. Blessings, blessings upon dear Father
Beret, was what he murmured in my ear when we were parting. He says
that he will never leave Quebec until he goes to his home above--ah!"
The way in which M. Roussillon closed his little speech, his large eyes
upturned, his huge hands clasped in front of him, was very effective.
"I am under many obligations, my son," said Father Beret, "for what you
tell me. It was good of you to remember my dear old friend and go to
him for his loving messages to me. I am very, very thankful. Help me to
another drop of wine, please."
Now the extraordinary feature of the situation was that Father Beret
had known positively for nearly five years that Father Sebastien was
dead and buried.
"Ah, yes," M. Roussillon continued, pouring the claret with one hand
and making a pious gesture with the other; "the dear old man loves you
and prays for you; his voice quavers whenever he speaks of you."
"Doubtless he made his old joke to you about the birth-mark on my
shoulder," said Father Beret after a moment of apparently thoughtful
silence. "He may have said something about it in a playful way, eh?"
"True, true, why yes, he surely mentioned the same," assented M.
Roussillon, his face assuming an expression of confused memory; "it was
something sly and humorous, I mind; but it just escapes my
recollection. A right jolly old boy is Father Sebastien; indeed very
amusing at times."
"At times, yes," said Father Beret, who had no birth-mark on his
shoulder, and had never had one there, or on any other part of his
person.
"How strange!" Alice remarked, "I, too, have a mark on my shoulder--a
pink spot, just like a small, five-petaled flower. We must be of kin to
each other, Father Beret."
The priest laughed.
"If our marks are alike, that would be some evidence of kinship," he
said.
"But what shape is yours, Father?"
"I've never seen it," he responded.
"Never seen it! Why?"
"Well, it's absolutely invisible," and he chuckled heartily, meantime
glancing shrewdly at M. Roussillon out of the tail of his eye.
"It's on the back part of his shoulder," quickly spoke up M.
Roussillon, "and you know priests never use looking-glasses. The mark
is quite invisible therefore, so far as Father Beret is concerned!"
"You never told me of your birth-mark before, my daughter," said Father
Beret, turning to Alice with sudden interest. "It may some day be good
fortune to you."
"Why so, Father?"
"If your family name is really Tarleton, as you suppose from the
inscription on your locket, the birth-mark, being of such singular
shape, would probably identify you. It is said that these marks run
regularly in families. With the miniature and the distinguishing
birth-mark you have enough to make a strong case should you once find
the right Tarleton family."
"You talk as they write in novels," said Alice. "I've read about just
such things in them. Wouldn't it be grand if I should turn out to be
some great personage in disguise!"
The mention of novels reminded Father Beret of that terrible book,
Manon Lescaut, which he last saw in Alice's possession, and he could
not refrain from mentioning it in a voice that shuddered.
"Rest easy, Father Beret," said Alice; "that is one novel I have found
wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it, I
flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome
to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about
low, vile people and hopeless unfortunates; I like sweet and lovely
heroines and strong, high-souled, brave heroes."
"Read about the blessed saints, then, my daughter; you will find in
them the true heroes and heroines of this world," said Father Beret.
M. Roussillon changed the subject, for he always somehow dreaded to
have the good priest fall into the strain of argument he was about to
begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of
longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a
Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often
forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all
his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not
altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in
childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done
a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it
represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued
his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to
him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without
undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This
promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it
as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost
conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this
departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified
his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father
Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the
church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original
characters.
A few weeks had passed after M. Roussillon's return, when that
big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful
trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all
the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function
that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.
Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the
occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon
having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously
fanciful that he accepted it without argument.
"If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to
stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated. "You promise that?
You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he
came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the
saddle, and away we went!"
There was a childish, half bantering air in her look; but her voice
sounded earnest and serious, notwithstanding its delicious timbre of
suppressed playfulness.
"You promise me?" she insisted.
"Oh, I promise to slink away into a corner and chew my thumb, the
moment he comes," Rene eagerly assented. "Of course I'm taking a great
risk, I know; for lords and barons and knights are very apt to appear
Suddenly in a place like this."
"You may banter and make light if you want to," she said, pouting
admirably. "I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other
corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person
dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come
true sooner or later."
"If that's so," said Rene, "you and I will get married; for I've
dreamed it every night of the year, wished for it, waited for it and
believed in it, and--"
It was a madly sudden rush. He made it on an impulse quite
irresistible, as hypnotized persons are said to do in response to the
suggestion of the hypnotist, and his heart was choking his throat
before he could end his speech. Alice interrupted him with a hearty
burst of laughter.
"A very pretty twist you give to my words, I must declare," she said;
"but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you
that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream
about her, and wish for her, and wait for her, precisely as you have
just said to me."
Rene's brown face flushed to the temples, partly with anger, partly
with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the
guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there
before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously.
"Don't you rather think, Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she presently
added in a calmly advisory tone, "that you had better quit trying to
say such foolish things to me, and just be my very good friend? If you
don't, I do, which comes to the same thing. What's more, I won't be
your partenaire at the dance unless you promise me on your word of
honor that you will dance two dances with Adrienne to every one that
you have with me. Do you promise?"
He dared not oppose her outwardly, although in his heart resistance
amounted to furious revolt and riot.
"I promise anything you ask me to," he said resignedly, almost
sullenly; "anything for you."
"Well, I ask nothing whatever on my own account," Alice quickly
replied; "but I do tell you firmly that you shall not maltreat little
Adrienne Bourcier and remain a friend of mine. She loves you, Rene de
Ronville, and you have told her that you love her. If you are a man
worthy of respect you will not desert her. Don't you think I am right?"
Like a singed and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the
alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his
embarrassment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become
his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as well as to
her that he had fallen to rise no more. In his abject defeat he
accepted the terms dictated by Alice and was glad when she adroitly
changed her manner and tone in going on to discuss the approaching
dance.
"Now let me make one request of you," he demanded after a while. "It's
a small favor; may I ask it?"
"Yes, but I don't grant it in advance."
"I want you to wear, for my sake, the buff gown which they say was your
grandmother's."
"No, I won't wear it."
"But why, Alice?"
"None of the other girls have anything like such a dress; it would not
be right for me to put it on and make them all feel that I had taken
the advantage of them, just because I could; that's why."
"But then none of them is beautiful and educated like you," he said;
"you'll outshine them anyway."
"Save your compliments for poor pretty little Adrienne," she firmly
responded, "I positively do not wish to hear them. I have agreed to be
your partenaire at this dance of Papa Roussillon's, but it is
understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet-heart. I am not, and
I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well
as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine
dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to
Papa Roussillon's mother long ago. I shall dress just as the rest do."
It is safe to say that Rene de Ronville went home with a troublesome
bee in his bonnet. He was not a bad-hearted fellow. Many a right good
young man, before him and since, has loved an Adrienne and been dazzled
by an Alice. A violet is sweet, but a rose is the garden's queen. The
poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not,
and what have we to say?
As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier
recently, she had come to realize what M. Roussillon meant when he
said; "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish
mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situation with a quick
understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove
permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty
and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost
hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense
of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her
experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young
girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively the
gist of it all.
The dance did not come off; it had to be postponed indefinitely on
account of a grave change in the political relations of the little
post. A day or two before the time set for that function a rumor ran
through the town that something of importance was about to happen.
Father Gibault, at the head of a small party, had arrived from
Kaskaskia, far away on the Mississippi, with the news that France and
the American Colonies had made common cause against the English in the
great war of which the people of Vincennes neither knew the cause nor
cared a straw about the outcome.
It was Oncle Jazon who came to the Roussillon place to tell M.
Roussillon that he was wanted at the river house. Alice met him at the
door.
"Come in, Oncle Jazon," she cheerily said, "you are getting to be a
stranger at our house lately. Come in; what news do you bring? Take off
your cap and rest your hair, Oncle Jazon."
The scalpless old fighter chuckled raucously and bowed to the best of
his ability. He not only took off his queer cap, but looked into it
with a startled gaze, as if he expected something infinitely dangerous
to jump out and seize his nose.
"A thousand thanks, Ma'm'selle," he presently said, "will ye please
tell Mo'sieu' Roussillon that I would wish to see 'im?"
"Yes, Oncle Jazon; but first be seated, and let me offer you just a
drop of eau de vie; some that Papa Roussillon brought back with him
from Quebec. He says it's old and fine."
She poured him a full glass, then setting the bottle on a little stand,
went to find M. Roussillon. While she was absent Oncle Jazon improved
his opportunity to the fullest extent. At least three additional
glasses of the brandy went the way of the first. He grinned atrociously
and smacked his corrugated lips; but when Gaspard Roussillon came in,
the old man was sitting at some distance from the bottle and glass
gazing indifferently out across the veranda. He told his story curtly.
Father Gibault, he said, had sent him to ask M. Roussillon to come to
the river house, as he had news of great importance to communicate.
"Ah, well, Oncle Jazon, we'll have a nip of brandy together before we
go," said the host.
"Why, yes, jes' one agin' the broilin' weather," assented Oncle Jazon;
"I don't mind jes' one."
"A very rich friend of mine in Quebec gave me this brandy, Oncle
Jazon," said M. Roussillon, pouring the liquor with a grand flourish;
"and I thought of you as soon as I got it. Now, says I to myself, if
any man knows good brandy when he tastes it, it's Oncle Jazon, and I'll
give him a good chance at this bottle just the first of all my friends."
"It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very delicious." He spoke
French with a curious accent, having spent long years with
English-speaking frontiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so that
their lingo had become his own.
As they walked side by side down the way to the river house they looked
like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather-tanned manhood;
Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every
respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered,
massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a
superb beard. They did not know that they were going down to help
dedicate the great Northwest to freedom.