THE DILEMMA OF CAPTAIN HELM
Oncle Jazon, feeling like a fish returned to the water after a long and
torturing captivity in the open air, plunged into the forest with
anticipations of lively adventure and made his way toward the Wea
plains. It was his purpose to get a boat at the village of Ouiatenon
and pull thence up the Wabash until he could find out what the English
were doing. He chose for his companions on this dangerous expedition
two expert coureurs de bois, Dutremble and Jacques Bailoup. Fifty miles
up the river they fell in with some friendly Indians, well known to
them all, who were returning from the portage.
The savages informed them that there were no signs of an English
advance in that quarter. Some of them had been as far as the St. Joseph
river and to within a short distance of Detroit without seeing a white
man or hearing of any suspicious movements on the part of Hamilton. So
back came Oncle Jazon with his pleasing report, much disappointed that
he had not been able to stir up some sort of trouble.
It was Helm's turn to laugh.
"What did I tell you?" he cried, in a jolly mood, slapping Beverley on
the shoulder. "I knew mighty well that it was all a big story with
nothing in it. What on earth would the English be thinking about to
march an army away off down here only to capture a rotten stockade and
a lot of gabbling parly-voos?"
Beverley, while he did not feel quite as confident as his chief, was
not sorry that things looked a little brighter than he had feared they
would turn out to be. Secretly, and without acknowledging it to
himself, he was delighted with the life he was living. The Arcadian
atmosphere of Vincennes clothed him in its mists and dreams. No matter
what way the weather blew its breath, cold or warm, cloudy or fair,
rain or snow, the peace in his soul changed not. His nature seemed to
hold all of its sterner and fiercer traits in abeyance while he
domiciled himself absolutely within his narrow and monotonous
environment. Since the dance at the river house a new content, like a
soft and diffused sweetness, had crept through his blood with a vague,
tingling sense of joy.
He began to like walking about rather aimlessly in the town's narrow
streets, with the mud-daubed cabins on either hand. This simple life
under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was opened he could
see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting its yellow tongues up
the sooty chimney-throat. Soft creole voices murmured and sang, or
jangled their petty domestic discords. Women in scant petticoats,
leggings and moccasins swept snow from the squat verandas, or fed the
pigs in little sties behind the cabins. Everybody cried cheerily: "Bon
jour, Monsieur, comment allez-vous?" as he went by, always accompanying
the verbal salute with a graceful wave of the hand.
When he walked early in the morning a waft of broiling game and
browning corn scones was abroad. Pots and kettles occupied the hearths
with glowing coals heaped around and under. Shaggy dogs whined at the
doors until the mensal remnants were tossed out to them in the front
yard.
But it was always a glimpse of Alice that must count for everything in
Beverley's reckonings, albeit he would have strenuously denied it. True
he went to Roussillon place almost every day, it being a fixed part of
his well ordered habit, and had a talk with her. Sometimes, when Dame
Roussillon was very busy and so quite off her guard, they read together
in a novel, or in certain parts of the odd volume of Montaigne. This
was done more for the sweetness of disobedience than to enjoy the
already familiar pages.
Now and again they repeated their fencing bout; but never with the
result which followed the first. Beverley soon mastered Alice's tricks
and showed her that, after all, masculine muscle is not to be
discounted at its own game by even the most wonderful womanly strength
and suppleness. She struggled bravely to hold her vantage ground once
gained so easily, but the inevitable was not to be avoided. At last,
one howling winter day, he disarmed her by the very trick that she had
shown him. That ended the play and they ran shivering into the house.
"Ah," she cried, "it isn't fair. You are so much bigger than I; you
have so much longer arms; so much more weight and power. It all counts
against me! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" She was rosy with the
exhilarating exercise and the biting of the frosty breeze. Her beauty
gave forth a new ray.
Deep in her heart she was pleased to have him master her so superbly;
but as the days passed she never said so, never gave over trying to
make him feel the touch of her foil. She did not know that her eyes
were getting through his guard, that her dimples were stabbing his
heart to its middle.
"You have other advantages," he replied, "which far overbalance my
greater stature and stronger muscles." Then after a pause he added:
"After all a girl must be a girl."
Something in his face, something in her heart, startled her so that she
made a quick little move like that of a restless bird.
"You are beautiful and that makes my eyes and my hand uncertain," he
went on. "Were I fencing with a man there would be no glamour."
He spoke in English, which he did not often do in conversation with
her. It was a sign that he was somewhat wrought upon. She followed his
rapid words with difficulty; but she caught from them a new note of
feeling. He saw a little pale flare shoot across her face and thought
she was angry.
"You should not use your dimples to distract my vision," he quickly
added, with a light laugh. "It would be no worse for me to throw my hat
in your face!"
His attempt at levity was obviously weak; she looked straight into his
eyes, with the steady gaze of a simple, earnest nature shocked by a
current quite strange to it. She did not understand him, and she did.
Her fine intuition gathered swiftly together a hundred shreds of
impression received from him during their recent growing intimacy. He
was a patrician, as she vaguely made him out, a man of wealth, whose
family was great. He belonged among people of gentle birth and high
attainments. She magnified him so that he was diffused in her
imagination, as difficult to comprehend as a mist in the morning
air--and as beautiful.
"You make fun of me," she said, very deliberately, letting her eyes
droop; then she looked up again suddenly and continued, with a certain
naive expression of disappointment gathering in her face. "I have been
too free with you. Father Beret told me not to forget my dignity when
in your company. He told me you might misunderstand me. I don't care; I
shall not fence with you again." She laughed, but there was no joyous
freedom in the sound.
"Why, Alice--my dear Miss Roussillon, you do me a wrong; I beg a
thousand pardons if I've hurt you," he cried, stepping nearer to her,
"and I can never forgive myself. You have somehow misunderstood me, I
know you have!"
On his part it was exaggerating a mere contact of mutual feelings into
a dangerous collision. He was as much self-deceived as was she, and he
made more noise about it.
"It is you who have misunderstood me," she replied, smiling brightly
now, but with just a faint, pitiful touch of regret, or self-blame
lingering in her voice. "Father Beret said you would. I did not believe
him; but--"
"And you shall not believe him," said Beverley. "I have not
misunderstood you. There has been nothing. You have treated me kindly
and with beautiful friendliness. You have not done or said a thing that
Father Beret or anybody else could criticise. And if I have said or
done the least thing to trouble you I repudiate it--I did not mean it.
Now you believe me, don't you, Miss Roussillon?"
He seemed to be falling into the habit of speaking to her in English.
She understood it somewhat imperfectly, especially when in an earnest
moment he rushed his words together as if they had been soldiers he was
leading at the charge-step against an enemy. His manner convinced her,
even though his diction fell short.
"Then we'll talk about something else," she said, laughing naturally
now, and retreating to a chair by the hearthside. "I want you to tell
me all about yourself and your family, your home and everything."
She seated herself with an air of conscious aplomb and motioned him to
take a distant stool.
There was a great heap of dry logs in the fireplace, with pointed
flames shooting out of its crevices and leaping into the gloomy,
cave-like throat of the flue. Outside a wind passed heavily across the
roof and bellowed in the chimney-top.
Beverley drew the stool near Alice, who, with a charred stick, used as
a poker, was thrusting at the glowing crevices and sending showers of
sparks aloft.
"Why, there wouldn't be much to tell," he said, glad to feel secure
again. "Our home is a big old mansion named Beverley Hall on a hill
among trees, and half surrounded with slave cabins. It overlooks the
plantation in the valley where a little river goes wandering on its
way." He was speaking French and she followed him easily now, her eyes
beginning to fling out again their natural sunny beams of interest. "I
was born there twenty-six years ago and haven't done much of anything
since. You see before you, Mademoiselle, a very undistinguished young
man, who has signally failed to accomplish the dream of his boyhood,
which was to be a great artist like Raphael or Angelo. Instead of being
famous I am but a poor Lieutenant in the forces of Virginia."
"You have a mother, father, brothers and sisters?" she interrogated.
She did not understand his allusion to the great artists of whom she
knew nothing. She had never before heard of them. She leaned the poker
against the chimney jamb and turned her face toward him.
"Mother, father, and one sister," he said, "no brothers. We were a
happy little group. But my sister married and lives in Baltimore. I am
here. Father and mother are alone in the old house. Sometimes I am
terribly homesick." He was silent a moment, then added: "But you are
selfish, you make me do all the telling. Now I want you to give me a
little of your story, Mademoiselle, beginning as I did, at the first."
"But I can't," she replied with childlike frankness, "for I don't know
where I was born, nor my parents' names, nor who I am. You see how
different it is with me. I am called Alice Roussillon, but I suppose
that my name is Alice Tarleton; it is not certain, however. There is
very little to help out the theory. Here is all the proof there is. I
don't know that it is worth anything."
She took off her locket and handed it to him.
He handled it rather indifferently, for he was just then studying the
fine lines of her face. But in a moment he was interested.
"Tarleton, Tarleton," he repeated. Then he turned the little disc of
gold over and saw the enameled drawing on the back,--a crest clearly
outlined.
He started. The crest was quite familiar.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded in English, and with such blunt
suddenness that she was startled. "Where did it come from?"
"I have always had it."
"Always? It's the Tarleton crest. Do you belong to that family?"
"Indeed I do not know. Papa Roussillon says he thinks I do."
"Well, this is strange and interesting," said Beverley, rather to
himself than addressing her. He looked from the miniature to the crest
and back to the miniature again, then at Alice. "I tell you this is
strange," he repeated with emphasis. "It is exceedingly strange."
Her cheeks flushed quickly under their soft brown and her eyes flashed
with excitement.
"Yes, I know." Her voice fluttered; her hands were clasped in her lap.
She leaned toward him eagerly. "It is strange. I've thought about it a
great deal."
"Alice Tarleton; that is right; Alice is a name of the family. Lady
Alice Tarleton was the mother of the first Sir Garnett Tarleton who
came over in the time of Yardley. It's a great family. One of the
oldest and best in Virginia." He looked at her now with a gaze of
concentrated interest, under which her eyes fell. "Why, this is
romantic!" he exclaimed, "absolutely romantic. And you don't know how
you came by this locket? You don't know who was your father, your
mother?"
"I do not know anything."
"And what does Monsieur Roussillon know?"
"Just as little."
"But how came he to be taking you and caring for you? He must know how
he got you, where he got you, of whom he got you? Surely he knows--"
"Oh, I know all that. I was twelve years old when Papa Roussillon took
me, eight years ago. I had been having a hard life, and but for him I
must have died. I was a captive among the Indians. He took me and has
cared for me and taught me. He has been very, very good to me. I love
him dearly."
"And don't you remember anything at all about when, where, how the
Indians got you?"
"No." She shook her head and seemed to be trying to recollect
something. "No, I just can't remember; and yet there has always been
something like a dream in my mind, which I could not quite get hold of.
I know that I am not a Catholic. I vaguely remember a sweet woman who
taught me to pray like this: 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
Thy name.'"
And Alice went on through the beautiful and perfect prayer, which she
repeated in English with infinite sweetness and solemnity, her eyes
uplifted, her hands clasped before her. Beverley could have sworn that
she was a shining saint, and that he saw an aureole.
"I know," she continued, "that sometime, somewhere, to a very dear
person I promised that I never, never, never would pray any prayer but
that. And I remember almost nothing else about that other life, which
is far off back yonder in the past, I don't know where,--sweet,
peaceful, shadowy; a dream that I have all but lost from my mind."
Beverley's sympathy was deeply moved. He sat for some minutes looking
at her without speaking. She, too, was pensive and silent, while the
fire sputtered and sang, the great logs slowly melting, the flames
tossing wisps of smoke into the chimney still booming to the wind.
"I know, too, that I am not French," she presently resumed, "but I
don't know just how I know it. My first words must have been English,
for I have always dreamed of talking in that language, and my dimmest
half recollections of the old days are of a large, white house, and a
soft-voiced black woman, who sang to me in that language the very
sweetest songs in the world."
It must be borne in mind that all this was told by Alice in her creole
French, half bookish, half patois, of which no translation can give any
fair impression.
Beverley listened, as one who hears a clever reader intoning a strange
and captivating poem. He was charmed. His imagination welcomed the
story and furnished it with all that it lacked of picturesque
completeness. In those days it was no uncommon thing for a white child
to be found among the Indians with not a trace left by which to restore
it to its people. He had often heard of such a case. But here was Alice
right before him, the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen,
telling him the strangest story of all. To his mind it was clear that
she belonged to the Tarleton family of Virginia. Youth always concludes
a matter at once. He knew some of the Tarletons; but it was a widely
scattered family, its members living in almost every colony in America.
The crest he recognized at a glance by the dragon on the helmet with
three stars. It was not for a woman to bear; but doubtless it had been
enameled on the locket merely as a family mark, as was often done in
America.
"The black woman was your nurse, your mammy," he said. "I know by that
and by your prayer in English, as well as by your locket, that you are
of a good old family."
Like most Southerners, he had strong faith in genealogy, and he held at
his tongue's tip the names of all the old families. The Carters, the
Blairs, the Fitzhughs, the Hansons, the Randolphs, the Lees, the
Ludwells, the Joneses, the Beverleys, the Tarletons--a whole catalogue
of them stretched back in his memory. He knew the coat of arms
displayed by each house. He could repeat their legends.
"I wish you could tell me more," he went on. "Can't you recollect
anything further about your early childhood, your first
impressions--the house, the woman who taught you to pray, the old black
mammy? Any little thing might be of priceless value as evidence."
Alice shrugged her shoulders after the creole fashion with something of
her habitual levity of manner, and laughed. His earnestness seemed
disproportioned to the subject, as she fancied he must view it,
although to her it had always been something to dream over. It was
impossible for her to realize, as he did, the importance of details in
solving a problem like that involved in her past history. Nor could she
feel the pathos and almost tragic fascination with which her story had
touched him.
"There is absolutely nothing more to tell," she said. "All my life I
have tried to remember more, but it's impossible; I can't get any
further back or call up another thing. There's no use trying. It's all
like a dream--probably it is one. I do have such dreams. In my sleep I
can lift myself into the air, just as easy, and fly back to the same
big white house that I seem to remember. When you told me about your
home it was like something that I had often seen before. I shall be
dreaming about it next!"
Beverley cross-questioned her from every possible point of view; he was
fascinated with the mystery; but she gave him nothing out of which the
least further light could be drawn. A half-breed woman, it seemed, had
been her Indian foster-mother; a silent, grave, watchful guardian from
whom not a hint of disclosure ever fell. She was, moreover, a Christian
woman, had received her conversion from an English-speaking Protestant
missionary. She prayed with Alice, thus keeping in the child's mind a
perfect memory of the Lord's prayer.
"Well," said Beverley at last, "you are more of a mystery to me, the
longer I know you."
"Then I must grow every day more distasteful to you."
"No, I love mystery."
He went away feeling a new web of interest binding him to this
inscrutable maiden whose life seemed to him at once so full of idyllic
happiness and so enshrouded in tantalizing doubt. At the first
opportunity he frankly questioned M. Roussillon, with no helpful
result. The big Frenchman told the same meager story. The woman was
dying in the time of a great epidemic, which killed most of her tribe.
She gave Alice to M. Roussillon, but told him not a word about her
ancestry or previous life. That was all.
A wise old man, when he finds himself in a blind alley, no sooner
touches the terminal wall than he faces about and goes back the way he
came. Under like circumstances a young man must needs try to batter the
wall down with his head. Beverley endeavored to break through the web
of mystery by sheer force. It seemed to him that a vigorous attempt
could not fail to succeed; but, like the fly in the spider's lines, he
became more hopelessly bound at every move he made. Moreover against
his will he was realizing that he could no longer deceive himself about
Alice. He loved her, and the love was mastering him body and soul. Such
a confession carries with it into an honest masculine heart a sense of
contending responsibilities. In Beverley's case the clash was
profoundly disturbing. And now he clutched the thought that Alice was
not a mere child of the woods, but a daughter of an old family of
cavaliers!
With coat buttoned close against the driving wind, he strode toward the
fort in one of those melodramatic moods to which youth in all climes
and times is subject. It was like a slap in the face when Captain Helm
met him at the stockade gate and said:
"Well, sir, you are good at hiding."
"Hiding! what do you mean, Captain Helm?" he demanded, not in the
mildest tone.
"I mean, sir, that I've been hunting you for an hour and more, over the
whole of this damned town. The English and Indians are upon us, and
there's no time for fooling. Where are all the men?"
Beverley comprehended the situation in a second. Helm's face was
congested with excitement. Some scouts had come in with the news that
Governor Hamilton, at the head of five or six hundred soldiers and
Indians, was only three or four miles up the river.
"Where are all the men?" Helm repeated.
"Buffalo hunting, most of them," said Beverley.
"What in hell are they off hunting buffaloes for?" raged the excited
captain.
"You might go to hell and see," Beverley suggested, and they both
laughed in sheer masculine contempt of a predicament too grave for
anything but grim mirth.
What could they do? Even Oncle Jazon and Rene de Ronville were off with
the hunters. Helm sent for M. Roussillon in the desperate hope that he
could suggest something; but he lost his head and hustled off to hide
his money and valuables. Indeed the French people all felt that, so far
as they were concerned, the chief thing was to save what they had. They
well knew that it mattered little which of the two masters held over
them--they must shift for themselves. In their hearts they were true to
France and America; but France and America could not now protect them
against Hamilton; therefore it would be like suicide to magnify
patriotism or any other sentiment objectionable to the English. So they
acted upon M. Roussillon's advice and offered no resistance when the
new army approached.
"My poor people are not disloyal to your flag and your cause," said
good Father Beret next morning to Captain Helm, "but they are
powerless. Winter is upon us. What would you have us do? This rickety
fort is not available for defense; the men are nearly all far away on
the plains. Isn't it the part of prudence and common sense to make the
best of a desperate situation? Should we resist, the British and their
savage allies would destroy the town and commit outrages too horrible
to think about. In this case diplomacy promises much more than a
hopeless fight against an overwhelming force."
"I'll fight 'em," Helm ground out between his teeth, "if I have to do
it single-handed and alone! I'll fight 'em till hell freezes over!"
Father Beret smiled grimly, as if he, too, would enjoy a lively
skirmish on the ice of Tophet, and said:
"I admire your courage, my son. Fighting is perfectly proper upon fair
occasion. But think of the poor women and children. These old eyes of
mine have seen some terrible things done by enraged savages. Men can
die fighting; but their poor wives and daughters--ah, I have seen, I
have seen!"
Beverley felt a pang of terror shoot through his heart as Father
Beret's simple words made him think of Alice in connection with an
Indian massacre.
"Of course, of course it's horrible to think of," said Helm; "but my
duty is clear, and that flag," he pointed to where la banniere d'Alice
Roussillon was almost blowing away in the cold wind, "that flag shall
not come down save in full honor."
His speech sounded preposterously boastful and hollow; but he was
manfully in earnest; every word came from his brave heart.
Father Beret's grim smile returned, lighting up his strongly marked
face with the strangest expression imaginable.
"We will get all the women inside the fort," Helm began to say.
"Where the Indians will find them ready penned up and at their mercy,"
quickly interpolated the priest "That will not do."
"Well, then, what can be done?" Beverley demanded, turning with a
fierce stare upon Father Beret. "Don't stand there objecting to
everything, with not a suggestion of your own to offer."
"I know what is best for my people," the old man replied softly, still
smiling, "I have advised them to stay inside their houses and take no
part in the military event. It is the only hope of averting an
indiscriminate massacre, and things worse."
The curt phrase, "things worse," went like a bullet-stroke through
Beverley's heart. It flashed an awful picture upon his vision. Father
Beret saw his face whiten and his lips set themselves to resist a great
emotion.
"Do not be angry with me, my son," he said, laying a hand on the young
man's arm. "I may be wrong, but I act upon long and convincing
experience."
"Experience or no experience," Helm exclaimed with an oath, "this fort
must be manned and defended. I am commanding here!"
"Yes, I recognize your authority," responded the priest in a firm yet
deferential tone, "and I heartily wish you had a garrison; but where is
your command, Captain Helm?" Then it was that the doughty Captain let
loose the accumulated profanity with which he had been for some time
well-nigh bursting. He tiptoed in order to curse with extremest
violence. His gestures were threatening. He shook his fists at Father
Beret, without really meaning offence.
"Where is my garrison, you ask! Yes, and I can tell you. It's where you
might expect a gang of dad blasted jabbering French good-for-nothings
to be, off high-gannicking around shooting buffaloes instead of staying
here and defending their wives, children, homes and country, damn their
everlasting souls! The few I have in the fort will sneak off, I
suppose."
"The French gave you this post on easy terms, Captain," blandly
retorted Father Beret.
"Yes, and they'll hand it over to Hamilton, you think, on the same
basis," cried Helm, "but I'll show you! I'll show you, Mr. Priest!"
"Pardon me, Captain, the French are loyal to you and to the flag
yonder. They have sworn it. Time will prove it. But in the present
desperate dilemma we must choose the safer horn."
Saying this Father Beret turned about and went his way. He was
chuckling heartily as he passed out of the gate.
"He is right," said Beverley after a few moments of reflection, during
which he was wholly occupied with Alice, whose terrified face in his
anticipation appealed to him from the midst of howling savages, smoking
cabins and mangled victims of lust and massacre. His imagination
painted the scene with a merciless realism that chilled his blood. All
the sweet romance fell away from Vincennes.
"Well, sir, right or wrong, your, duty is to obey orders," said Helm
with brutal severity.
"We had better not quarrel, Captain," Beverley replied. "I have not
signified any unwillingness to obey your commands. Give them, and you
will have no cause to grumble."
"Forgive me, old fellow," cried the impulsive commander. "I know you
are true as steel. I s'pose I'm wound up too tight to be polite. But
the time is come to do something. Here we are with but five or six
men--"
He was interrupted by the arrival of two more half-breed scouts.
Only three miles away was a large flotilla of boats and canoes with
cannon, a force of Indians on land and the British flag flying,--that
was the report.
"They are moving rapidly," said the spokesman, "and will be here very
soon. They are at least six hundred strong, all well armed."
"Push that gun to the gate, and load it to the muzzle, Lieutenant
Beverley," Helm ordered with admirable firmness, the purple flush in
his face giving way to a grayish pallor. "We are going to die right
here, or have the honors of war."
Beverley obeyed without a word. He even loaded two guns instead of
one--charging each so heavily that the last wad looked as if ready to
leap from the grimy mouth.
Helm had already begun, on receiving the first report, a hasty letter
to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia. He now added a few words and at the last
moment sent it out by a trusted man, who was promptly captured by
Hamilton's advance guard. The missive, evidently written in
installments during the slow approach of the British, is still in the
Canadian archives, and runs thus:
"Dear Sir--At this time there is an army within three miles of this
place; I heard of their coming several days beforehand. I sent spies to
find the certainty--the spies being taken prisoner I never got
intelligence till they got within three miles of town. As I had called
the militia and had all assurances of their integrity I ordered at the
firing of a cannon every man to appear, but I saw but few. Captain
Buseron behaved much to his honor and credit, but I doubt the conduct
of a certain gent. Excuse haste, as the army is in sight. My
determination is to defend the garrison, (sic) though I have but
twenty-one men but what has left me. I refer you to Mr. Wmes (sic) for
the rest. The army is within three hundred yards of the village. You
must think how I feel; not four men that I really depend upon; but am
determined to act brave--think of my condition. I know it is out of my
power to defend the town, as not one of the militia will take arms,
though before sight of the army no braver men. There is a flag at a
small distance, I must conclude.
"Your humble servant,
"Leo'd Helm. Must stop."
"To Colonel Clark."
Having completed this task, the letter shows under what a nervous
strain, Helm turned to his lieutenant and said:
"Fire a swivel with a blank charge. We'll give these weak-kneed
parly-voos one more call to duty. Of course not a frog-eater of them
all will come. But I said that a gun should be the signal. Possibly
they didn't hear the first one, the damned, deaf, cowardly hounds!"
Beverley wheeled forth the swivel and rammed a charge of powder home.
But when he fired it, the effect was far from what it should have been.
Instead of calling in a fresh body of militia, it actually drove out
the few who up to that moment had remained as a garrison; so that
Captain Helm and his Lieutenant found themselves quite alone in the
fort, while out before the gate, deployed in fine open order, a strong
line of British soldiers approached with sturdy steps, led by a tall,
erect, ruddy-faced young officer.